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HATTIESBURG — Janice Jones scanned the growing crowd, her brown eyes squinting in the bright sun. 

About 30 people, some wearing red t-shirts and holding signs, were gathering at a fountain near University of Southern Mississippi’s Danforth Chapel for a protest. The group planned to march to President Rodney Bennett’s office and deliver more than 250 pledge cards calling on him to raise the university’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

All week, Jones and her fellow custodians had talked about attending. Custodians she didn’t know had stopped her in the hall to ask if she was going. But now it was fifteen minutes past four, the rally was set to start, and only one of Jones’ coworkers had shown up. 

“Most of them are Black,” she said. “I’m looking, and I’m like, where are all the Black faces?” 

Jones has worked as a custodian at USM for about three years. She hadn’t intended to stay for long until a car accident at the start of the pandemic left her scrambling to save for knee surgery. These days, she clocks in just before 5 a.m. for her shift, cleaning toilets, sanitizing desks and door handles, and sweeping sunflower seeds from between seats in the M.M. Roberts Stadium. For that work, Jones makes about $10 an hour, the lowest wage on campus. 

Shortly before her car accident, Jones learned about a group called United Campus Workers (UCW). The labor union, an affiliate of Communication Workers of America, was looking for custodians to join its “Fight for $15” campaign, and she quickly got involved in the chapter. But the pandemic made it difficult to organize. As USM went “back to normal,” turnover increased. Jones said it felt like the workload tripled. USM started bussing Jones and the remaining custodians around campus, often requiring them to work “mandatory overtime” at 1.5 times their typical hourly pay.

Then in January, Bennett, who made history when he became USM’s first Black president eight years ago, announced his intent to step down in 2023. Jones and other members of UCW spotted an opportunity. One of Bennett’s first acts as president had been to establish the $10 minimum wage on campus — UCW thought maybe that could be one of Bennett’s last acts too. So about a month ago, UCW members got together and voted to hold a protest the first week of May. 

In front of the fountain, Jones tried to put her coworkers out of her mind as Samuel Ewing, another UCW member, climbed onto a concrete hedge to start the rally. Through a megaphone, Ewing told the crowd that he was one of the many workers on campus who made far less than $10 an hour. As an adjunct professor, he had taught four classes this past year and made just $12,000. 

UCW’s campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, he said, would benefit “a broad swath” of workers on campus. 

“I’m talking custodial, janitorial workers, these are library workers, administrators — the people who run this university, who make this place what it is,” he said. “If we want to be a place that’s welcoming to students, that’s supporting the students, we’ve got to support the people who make this university work.” 

“The university is going to raise the wage,” Ewing continued, “but they’re only gonna do it if we demand it. They’re only gonna do it if we show them that we want it, that we deserve it, that we need it, and that we’re gonna build a healthy community.” 

“Yes, yes!” Jones said, nodding her head. 

It was February 2020, and Jones was taking her 12 o’clock break outside the liberal arts building when a tall, white man with long hair approached her. His name was John Jester, he said, and he was an organizer with United Campus Workers. Did she have some time to talk about the union? 

As Jones smoked a cigarette, Jester started his spiel. UCW got its start in 2000, he said, when a group of faculty, student workers and community members at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, voted to form a “wall-to-wall” union that any employee could join. Now, amid a national wave of unionization, UCW was on a mission to organize higher education in the South — a difficult task in Mississippi, considering state law bans public employees from going on strike. 

“We’re not trying to go for an election,” Jester said. “It’s really about bringing all the different constituencies around campus together — faculty, tenured and non-tenured, grad staff, facilities and maintenance — and just identifying the issues that need to be changed.” 

If Jester wanted custodians to join UCW, Jones said there were a lot of places he could start. For one, custodians needed a significant raise. Most took on extra jobs to make ends meet; at the time, Jones was working for a temp agency. 

Another issue, Jones said, was the attendance-based point system used by the Physical Plant, the department that oversees custodians. Per the policy, custodians can accrue points for missing a shift, clocking in late, or leaving early — accumulating 10 points can result in dismissal. The policy was intended to curb excessive absences, but Jones said she felt like it was regularly misused. She said she was one of many custodians who were given points even after providing human resources with a doctor’s note. 

About a month later, the pandemic hit Mississippi. Jones was driving a van for her second job when she got into an accident and tore a ligament in her right knee. She requested accommodations at USM, but the best the school could do was limit the time she spent cleaning stairs. To this day, Jones wears a blue brace because she is still saving to pay for surgery.

“They explained there’s no such thing as ‘light duty’ out here,” she said. “You either can do the job or you can’t.” 

Jones gave Jester her phone number that day in February 2020. Over the course of the next year, she regularly joined him outside the gate of the Physical Plant to talk to her coworkers about unionizing. 

When Jones talked to coworkers about the union, she tried to explain it through her personal experience. In the 1960s, when she was growing up in Hattiesburg, her dad had been a member of the union at the now-closed Hercules chemical plant. He was one of the first Black employees there. Jones, who described herself as a “nosy child,” said she would bug her dad to explain why he was “always talking about ‘the union.’” She later learned a union steward had helped her parents access credit that allowed them to buy their home, a small three-bedroom in an all-white neighborhood. 

“He would explain to us that when you have a union, you have a group of people that are gonna be there for you,” she said. “Some companies, they’re in control of everything — whatever they say or decide, it’s entirely up to them. When you have a union rep, you’ve got somebody that’s gonna fight for you.” 

Some of Jones’ co-workers responded to her stories enthusiastically and they too started passing out fliers. But others were wary. They’d sign pledge cards but never show up to meetings. Once, Jones said that several coworkers she’d invited to an off-campus UCW meeting left when they couldn’t find parking at the restaurant. 

In Mississippi, which has long had one of the lowest rates of union membership in the country, Jones knew that organizing was a fraught and unfamiliar subject for many people. But she hadn’t realized exactly how scared her coworkers were of losing their job — not the money, but some of its crucial benefits, like access to the state of Mississippi’s retirement plan and discounted tuition for their kids. 

It also seemed to Jones like custodians were being warned not to speak out. During summer 2021, Jones and Jester were leafleting outside the gate when a police car pulled up. The officers told Jester he was violating the campus solicitation policy and had to leave. (USM officials did not dispute this description of the incident.)

Jones doesn’t know who called the police, but after Jester left, a manager at the Physical Plant asked Jones to follow her back to her office so she could make a copy of UCW’s fliers. Jones told her no, she was off the clock. If she wanted one, she could’ve asked Jester for it. 

Around the same time, 24-year-old Kyrelle Harris, a former custodian, said he was fired because he accumulated too many points. Harris said he was outspoken about how USM made him use vacation time when he got COVID in early 2020 and was still too sick to return to work after his quarantine period. After he complained, he said he started to get “nitpicked” about his work on the job. 

In a statement, Margaret Ann McCloud, USM’s spokesperson, wrote USM “offers staff members with medical conditions access to multiple avenues of employment protection” and does not retaliate. She said “only one Physical Plant employee has lost a job for excessive absences under the points system in the past 12 months.” 

Harris never joined UCW, even though he wanted his working conditions to improve. He said he couldn’t afford the $15 monthly dues on his paycheck. He also said he felt like custodians who had advocated for higher wages never got anywhere, which made him feel discouraged from trying. 

After Ewing finished his speech on Thursday, he led Jones, Jester, and the rest of the protesters in a short march to the Aubrey K. Lucas Administration Building, where Bennett’s office is. Jester paused on the steps. He held up a manila envelope of pledge cards, turned to Jones, and nodded. They had spent a year working toward this moment, but neither of them knew what to expect. “Alright,” he said. 

The inside of the administration building was cooler than outside, lined with dark wood and granite. In a single-file line, Jones, Jester, and J. Theresa Bush, a third member of UCW, walked up to the front desk, introduced themselves to the receptionist, and asked if they could talk to Bennett. After a moment, a white man came out, and Jester handed him the envelope. They turned to leave. Then Bennett walked out the glass doors of his office. 

“Good to see you,” he said. “Tell me what this is about.” 

Since Bennett became president in 2013, USM has grown its economic footprint and reached record levels of enrollment. Raising the minimum wage that year was just one of a number of decisions that garnered good will. According to Gulf Live, Bennett made the decision in response to a request from a worker at an open forum. 

“This will allow employees to live the type of life that USM employees should be able to live,” Bennett said at the time. “I think it will allow employees to spend more time with their families and children. It’s the right thing to do, and it will have an impact on the economics of the community.” 

But in the eight years since the raise, many low-wage workers say their take-home pay has not significantly increased. In a statement, Jim Coll, USM’s chief communication officer, said that “while the USM minimum pay rate has remained the same, employees at all pay levels have received pay increases on multiple occasions over the past decade, and have benefitted from promotion opportunities.”

Standing next to Bennett, Jones felt nervous. She thought he seemed surprised by the protest, and she hoped he would take them seriously. 

“We’re just appealing to you,” Jester said, “because when you came in you raised the wages.” 

“That was a real priority for me when I first got here to do that,” Bennett replied. 

Everybody shook hands and, at first, it seemed like Bennett was going to go back inside his office. Then Bush made a request: Would Bennett come back outside with them? An assistant professor of theater, Bush wanted to give Bennett a chance to acknowledge that he had received UCW’s pledge cards to the protesters. 

“Everybody’s there,” she said. “That would be amazing.” 

Outside, Bennett held up the manila envelope of pledge cards. 

“I’ve got my materials,” he said. “So we’ll take a look at it. Thank y’all for being here.” 

After the protest, Jones and her coworker stuck around the fountain and talked about everything they’d like to see improved at work — the point system, the mandatory overtime, the pay. Jones’ thoughts turned to her brief interaction with Bennett. She felt teary-eyed. 

“I hope it doesn’t turn ugly,” she thought. “But he’s on his way out. The way he looked, he’s only going to do what they let him.” 

Jones also kept thinking about her coworkers, the ones who said they’d be there but didn’t come. In the two years she’d been organizing with USM, the chapter had grown to about 30 members, but it was mostly faculty. Still, she was shocked that so few Physical Plant workers showed up because custodians and other low-wage workers stood to gain the most from a wage increase. 

“It’s their security blanket,” Jones said. “They want more, they know they deserve more, but they’re so afraid of losing this job, they just disconnect, and they don’t want to be associated with it, but they’re willing to reap any benefits that come out of this.” 

A local TV station had filmed the protest, and the next day, Jones heard about the segment from some of her coworkers. They could tell she was in the crowd by her bedazzled “Limited Edition” baseball hat and shiny gold hoops. Jones was tempted to ask where they’d been. Instead, she told them they missed out.

The post ‘We need it’: How one custodian is fighting fear to get a pay raise at University of Southern Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Tyler tells the story of falling in love with baseball all over again at Pisgah High and breaks down the MHSAA playoffs ahead of this weekend’s North and South State Championships. Rick updates us all on the state of Mississippi college baseball headed into a crucial week for all of Mississippi’s big three schools.

Stream all episodes here.

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As Mississippi parents of babies who are formula-fed grapple with the national shortage, parents on government assistance and those who have babies with allergies may face extra challenges.

The formula shortage is having a major impact in Mississippi, which has the second-lowest rate of breastfeeding in the nation. Parents are taking to social media to swap formulas and post about available products that are in stock at stores. Some are even attempting to start breastfeeding again – a difficult and time-consuming process – and doctors have had to issue warnings about homemade formula.

Supply-chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic are one cause of the formula shortage. Manufacturers are struggling to obtain certain ingredients, and labor issues have affected distribution. 

The shortage has also been exacerbated by a recent recall of three major baby formula brands manufactured by Abbott Nutrition after a probe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found bacterial contamination at one Abbott facility in Sturgis, Mich. At least four babies were hospitalized and two died after consuming contaminated formula, the Food and Drug Administration said.

At retailers across the country, 31% of the top-selling baby formula products were out of stock in April, according to an analysis from Datasembly, which tracked baby formula stock at more than 11,000 stores. 

In contrast, the national out-of-stock levels for baby formula were at 11% in November.

Lauren Bolsinger and her husband have been struggling to find formula for their 7-month-old baby girl, Vivianne, for several months, sometimes traveling to 10 different stores in a day and only finding one can of formula. They’ve switched formulas twice due to the shortage, and are now using a generic Walmart brand that upsets their baby’s stomach. 

“Every single day, we’re going to multiple stores just hoping that it’s restocked, but it’s completely out,” Bolsinger, who lives in Madison, said. 

Ashlee Wallace of Brandon has struggled to find the formula her 7-month-old son needs due to a cow’s milk protein allergy. 

“It’s scary to think about,” Wallace said. “What happens if we can’t get it? What do you do?”

Bolsinger has seen other moms in similar situations. She once ran into a young mom who was crying because the store didn’t have the formula she needed. The mom told her she had been to five stores that day searching for a specific formula her baby needs due to her child’s allergies. 

“Being able to get formula for your baby is not something a mom should have to worry about, at any point,” Bolsinger said. 

Some mothers who have relied on formula are attempting to restart breastfeeding after previously stopping, according to retired lactation consultant Nell Blakely of Brandon.

Blakely helps run a Facebook support group for breastfeeding mothers. She said she has seen an average of two inquiries a day from moms looking for help with relactation.  

Blakely has been helping walk them through that difficult process with limited success. One method is for the mother to let her baby use her breast as a pacifier, which encourages the mother’s body to produce milk. 

Another method is using a breast pump in several minute increments 10 to 12 times per day.

“It’s doable, but I would never say that it isn’t a whole lot of work,” Blakely said. 

And for mothers on government assistance, finding the right type of formula can be uniquely challenging. The Women, Infants and Children’s Nutrition Program (WIC) only covers four formula types unless an infant gets an exemption through a medical diagnosis. 

There were 84,000 women, children and infants who participated in WIC in Mississippi in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

WIC centers are telling parents who can’t find formula to contact their pediatricians and look into direct shipping from manufacturers if breastfeeding is not an option, said Liz Sharlot, director of communications at Mississippi Department of Health.

Dr. Anita Henderson, president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatrician at The Pediatric Clinic in Hattiesburg, said her clinic has received many calls from concerned moms over the last few weeks because they’re having trouble finding the formula they use. 

“We’re encouraging them to check in different stores, because smaller pharmacies and grocery stores may get restocked more quickly, or just be utilized less than the large chains like Walmart.”

Some parents are making their own formula at home, a practice that health departments and doctors warn against.

 “Babies need those nutrients in the right combinations and the right concentration, and that’s impossible to guarantee if parents try to make it themselves,” Henderson said. 

Henderson also said it’s important that parents don’t dilute the formula they’re using to try and make their supply last longer. That not only cuts down on the nutritional value of the formula but can cause water intoxication in babies that results in major health problems like seizures.

Health officials are also asking parents not to hoard formula once they find it. Hoarding exacerbated shortages of items like toilet paper and hand sanitizer when those items became hard to find due to supply chain shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

 “Please be cognizant of the fact that there are many moms and dads out there and we all want to keep our babies fed,” Henderson said. 

The formula shortage has necessitated large multi-person hunts for the products. Facebook groups for moms are full of people asking where they can find a certain formula, while others alert the group to where they can find formula when they see it.

For Gina Lovette of Hernando, the hunt for formula has “become kind of gamified in a sick way.” She and other moms in the area have created a group chat where they go over their finds, sharing and trading cans of formula when they find the brands another is looking for.

“Moms know we have to look out for each other, but it’s ridiculous that we have to do this at all,” Lovette said. 

The post ‘It’s scary’: Mothers scour stores, social media to find baby formula appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Dr. Cheryl Hamlin added a line to her standard message for patients during their counseling sessions at Mississippi’s only abortion clinic last week.

“As you hopefully have heard, the Supreme Court is probably going to overrule Roe v. Wade, which means this clinic will close,” she said to dozens of people who had traveled to Jackson from as far away as Texas for an abortion. 

About half of the patients hadn’t heard, she told Mississippi Today. So she explained: A draft opinion leaked May 2 indicated the court is poised to overturn the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion and guaranteed at least a modicum of access to the procedure in every state in the country — even if states like Mississippi imposed such strict and medically unnecessary regulations that only one clinic was left standing.

If the Supreme Court officially overturns Roe, Mississippi has a law on the books that will almost immediately ban abortion in almost all cases. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the clinic at the center of the case before the Supreme Court, will likely stop providing abortions.

One woman asked if that meant Hamlin would be out of a job. Hamlin, who lives in Massachusetts and visits Jackson about once a month for three days of work at the clinic, told her she would be all right. 

“Well, I’m going to be fine,” Hamlin recalled the patient saying. “I’m going to take these pills and I’m never going to come back here.”

“I said, ‘Well, you and I are going to be fine. There’s a whole bunch of people that won’t be.” 

As an OB-GYN in the Boston area, Hamlin says she has lived “in a pretty nice bubble.” She received training in abortion care during her residency at the Boston Medical Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was always a part of her practice. 

“They would come to my office, say that’s what they wanted, I scheduled them in the operating room in the hospital, and they went without protesters and their insurance paid for it and it was no big deal,” she said. “I really thought that was what people did. And that was my job. I didn’t see it as any moral imperative.”

Then, Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States. Hamlin read about the state of abortion access in other parts of the country. She wanted to do something. 

She had never spent time in Mississippi, but she got connected to the medical director at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. She went to visit, liked it, and got licensed in Mississippi.

In the fall of 2017, she joined the team of out-of-state doctors who fly in for shifts at the clinic. Almost every month, she travels from Boston to Jackson for a three-day shift. 

Her work days at the clinic start around 8:30 a.m. Clinic staff spend the mornings providing state-mandated counseling, including the claim that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, even though scientific studies show that’s not true. 

After that counseling, patients have to wait at least 24 hours for their next visit, per state law. 

In the afternoons, Hamlin provides surgical procedures and administers the first pill for medication abortions, as required by Mississippi law.

Patients take the rest of the medications at home. More than half of the abortions provided at the clinic are medication abortions, Hamlin said. 

During breaks in the day, Hamlin likes to go outside to visit with the clinic escorts. They call themselves the Pink House Defenders, wear rainbow-colored vests and try to shield patients from the protestors jostling to persuade them to turn around. 

When Hamlin came to Mississippi, she expected the demonstrators and seeing patients forced to travel long distances. But she didn’t foresee how many of her patients would lack access to any kind of regular health care. 

Massachusetts has one of the country’s lowest rates of people without health insurance, at 2.4%. Mississippi has one of the highest, at 11.9%. Among people under 65, the rate is 14.1%. 

Hamlin regularly talks to patients who couldn’t afford to fill their birth control prescription because they are uninsured. When she asks if they have a regular gynecologist, the answer is often no. 

“That’s almost unheard of in Massachusetts,” she said. 

Hamlin, through her work at the Pink House, has already glimpsed what the dismantling of Roe will look like. 

Last year, the Jackson clinic began to see something entirely new: patients from Texas. 

The state banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy last year, with a unique and unprecedented enforcement mechanism. 

Private citizens can sue anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion, and win $10,000 in damages if they’re successful. (People who are sued and win can’t recoup attorney’s fees.)

The Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect. Since September, Texans have gone across the border to purchase abortion medication in Mexico. They’ve traveled to Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Louisiana, and the Pink House. 

Texas patients flooding Louisiana clinics pushed Louisiana patients to Mississippi. The Jackson clinic changed its opening hours from three days a week to five. 

Through it all, Hamlin has kept working, wondering how long it will last. 

She arrived in Jackson for her shift on the night of May 2. She was checking emails when she saw the news about the leaked draft opinion. It wasn’t a surprise. 

Since she started working in Mississippi, her counseling sessions have always included information about the movement to overturn Roe. She reminds patients from Texas that Gov. Greg Abbott is up for re-election soon. 

But it was still a shock. 

“Like yeah, this is really going to happen,” she said. 

The next morning, a Tuesday, was a quiet one at the clinic. Regulars passed the word that many of the usual anti-abortion demonstrators had gone to Ukraine for missionary work. 

Hamlin and her colleagues at the clinic are still waiting to see what the final ruling will be – likely in June or July – and what laws Mississippi will pass. The state’s trigger ban, passed in 2007, will likely ban all abortions except in cases of rape and to save the life of the mother. 

Though they haven’t been introduced in the state legislature, other potential laws could seek to prohibit travel or referrals for abortions. 

The Jackson clinic’s director, Shannon Brewer, told NBC last week she plans to open a clinic in New Mexico, about 1,000 miles away from Jackson. Getting patients there, or to southern Illinois, could be expensive and logistically difficult, but Southern abortion funds have vowed to keep helping people access abortions. 

Hamlin worries what could happen to a Mississippian who gets an abortion out of state but develops complications back home. 

In the decades before Roe, going to a hospital after an abortion could trigger a criminal investigation in which the patient was forced to participate. 

“I think people are going to be afraid to seek care, emergency room care,” Hamlin said. “They may be a little bit now actually. But I think it’s going to get a lot worse.”

The post This doctor provides abortions at Mississippi’s last clinic. Now, she’s preparing for her final shift. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Medical Center have agreed on a mediator, who will oversee an arbitration process to settle the contract dispute that has left the state’s largest hospital out of network with its largest insurer.

Walter Johnson, senior counsel at the law firm Watkins & Eager, will be the mediator. Johnson’s bio on the firm’s website states that he has “mediated and arbitrated hundreds of matters for parties both within and outside of Mississippi since 1994.”

“He has mediated some very complex cases and is familiar with the subject matter area,” Mike Haire, Mississippi Deputy Commissioner of Insurance, told Mississippi Today. “We’re excited that the parties have agreed upon someone who we believe will be a very fair and objective mediator, and who hopefully will be able to help the parties find some common ground here.”

Johnson will now reach out to both parties and get all the information he needs before they schedule the first mediation session, Haire said.

“The commissioner (Mike Chaney) is certainly very hopeful that the parties can make great progress, if not find a resolution, by early June,” Haire said. 

UMMC and Blue Cross did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication. 

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney sent the UMMC and Blue Cross a letter on April 21 urging them to agree to bringing in an expert and impartial mediator who could preside over new contract negotiations. 

Blue Cross and UMMC used the mediation process to settle their last contract dispute in 2018, and it took around ten days to strike a deal. At that time, Blue Cross agreed to remove language that made the contract evergreen, meaning the insurance company could no longer change the contract terms at any time.

UMMC claims that between 2014 and 2017, Blue Cross made annual changes to their reimbursement rates that decreased the overall reimbursement UMMC received to care for Blue Cross patients. UMMC received an overall 1% increase as part of the 2018 negotiations, but no changes have been made to their reimbursement rates since then.

Under state agency rules, Chaney is not allowed to directly mediate or help settle disputes over contacts between insurance companies and health care providers.

Chaney’s involvement stems from concerns that UMMC not being in Blue Cross’ network runs afoul of state network adequacy regulations due to UMMC providing services that cannot be found elsewhere in the state, such as its organ transplant unit and children’s hospital.

Blue Cross maintains that even without UMMC, it is still meeting its network adequacy requirement. The insurer also said that the remedy in a situation where network adequacy is an issue is for it to provide network level benefits to its customers for those services, which it has offered to do by directing its members to sign a written direction of payment instructing the insurer to pay the hospital. 

UMMC has declined to accept those payments from Blue Cross, arguing that it would allow Blue Cross to continue paying at unsustainable rates. 

UMMC and Blue Cross have not been in communication since April 1, when UMMC officially went out of network with the insurance company, according to officials from both entities. Tens of thousands of Mississippians – some of them gravely ill and others in need of advanced specialties only available at UMMC – are stuck in the middle of the dispute.

Though the two parties have had similar contract disputes in previous years, this is the first time UMMC has been removed from the Blue Cross network. 

As a result, tens of thousands of Mississippians have been left to face higher out-of-pocket medical expenses or find care elsewhere. Potential transplant recipients who have spent months or years on organ donation waitlists have been placed on hold. Parents of children who require specialized care that can only be provided at UMMC’s children’s hospital have been left with costly and inconvenient options for continuing their child’s care. 

UMMC is asking Blue Cross for substantial increases to inpatient, outpatient and professional reimbursement rates, some as large as 50%. Overall reimbursement from Blue Cross would increase by around 30% in the first year of the new contract. 

Mississippi has the lowest reimbursement rate from commercial insurance companies for inpatient services in the nation, according to a 2021 white paper by the actuarial and consulting firm Milliman. While UMMC maintains that BCBSMS is paying them well below market rates for other academic medical centers in the region, BCBSMS argues that agreeing to the increases would necessitate significant premium increases for their customers – despite a Mississippi Today investigation that revealed the insurer is sitting on an enormous reserve of money.

The post UMMC, Blue Cross agree to mediator in insurance contract dispute appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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The Jackson Public School District is expanding pre-kindergarten services through a $9 million grant from the state, allowing them to serve more 4-year-olds in the city. 

The grant comes from the statewide early learning collaboratives program, which are pre-K programs made up of partnerships among school districts, Head Start agencies, childcare centers, and nonprofit groups. The state’s early learning collaboratives have earned high marks for quality on national reports, but have previously been critiqued for limited access. 

The JPS collaborative will serve an additional 460 students and is part of a move to double the number of students served statewide by fall 2022. By August, 30 collaboratives will be serving more than 6,000 children across the state. 

The Jackson collaborative includes JPS, Jackson State University’s Lottie W. Thornton Early Childhood Center, Little Saints Academy, and Head Start provider Hinds County Human Resource Agency. It will serve  1,226 students, approximately the same number that are currently enrolled in kindergarten with the district.

“The idea behind the collaborative is really to expand access to the same high quality that they would experience in a school-based pre-K program, and to provide the same resourcing and professional development so that you elevate teaching and learning on both ends,” said Michael Cormack, deputy superintendent of JPS. 

The collaborative will follow the state’s newly released “Mississippi Beginnings” pre-K curriculum, and will host professional development opportunities once a month on Saturdays. The grant will allow the district to compensate teachers for this additional time, and the trainings will also be open to other childcare professionals that aren’t a part of the collaborative. 

JPS Superintendent Errick Greene said in a statement that this grant will help prepare more students to experience success in school. Cormack said the expansion will eliminate the need for considerations of financial need or waiting lists that had previously been a part of JPS’s pre-K admissions process. The program is currently enrolling students and recruiting teachers, and the district is putting an emphasis on trying to get parents to register early so they can plan accordingly. 

“I think what’s really exciting is that with the addition of Jackson, we will become the largest collaborative and we will help to build the scale of what the state of Mississippi has been doing,” Cormack said. “Ultimately, we’re hopeful that as we prove this concept and we prove that pre-kindergarten works, that we can help to build to scale the ability to serve all four-year-olds throughout the state.  We view that as a part of our challenge, demonstrating what is possible here.”

The post JPS receives $9 million to expand pre-K access appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services is suing 38 people or companies for squandering welfare money that was supposed to address poverty in the poorest state in the nation.

The long awaited civil lawsuit, which intends to claw back roughly $24 million in federal funds misused in a sprawling scandal officials began to unravel almost three years ago, targets famous athletes Brett Favre, former running back Marcus Dupree, former linebacker Paul Lacoste, retired WWE wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase Sr. and his two sons, among others.

The lawsuit details bold disregard from officials and contractors for either effective public spending or for the people they were supposed to be assisting — actions indicative of a state government with a cynical approach to anti-poverty programs.

“I do not understand these people,” attorney Brad Pigott, who wrote the lawsuit, told Mississippi Today by email. “What kind of person would decide that money the law required to be spent helping the poorest people in the poorest state would be better spent being doled out by them to their own families, their own pet projects, and their own favorite celebrities?”

But two entities who received welfare funds through activities referenced in recent criminal pleas — University of Southern Miss Athletic Foundation and tech company Lobaki Inc. — do not appear as defendants in the May 9 filing.

[Editor’s note: A full list of defendants and a copy of the full lawsuit appears near the bottom of this story.]

Nancy New and her son Zach New, who ran a nonprofit that received tens of millions under contracts with the Mississippi Department of Human Services, pleaded guilty in April to several charges bribery and fraud charges related to how they used their nonprofit’s public funding. Much of the money was illegally funneled to other nonprofits or contractors, which were considered “second tier” recipients of the welfare department. The latest civil lawsuit pursues some, but not all of these recipients.

Nancy New admitted to defrauding the government when she paid Lobaki $365,000 to run a virtual reality program. Her son and the nonprofit’s assistant director, Zach New, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for transferring $500,000 to the construction of the physical virtual reality center. He disguised the expenditures as “lease” payments. Zach New also admitted to defrauding the government by transferring $4 million for the construction of the volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, which was also disguised as a lease.

MDHS originally told WLBT last October that its lawsuit would include the Southern Miss athletic foundation and Lobaki.

And yet, they were apparently removed during the drafting phase, because these recipients do not appear among the defendants in the civil suit filed Monday.

Pigott, the former U.S. Attorney who was hired by MDHS to craft the lawsuit, and the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office, who is also on the suit, have not discussed their process for choosing which welfare recipients to pursue in the case. Many, but not all, of the defendants received demand letters last year from the State Auditor’s Office, the agency that originally investigated the case. The athletic foundation and Lobaki did not.

MDHS was ready to file this lawsuit over six months ago, shortly after independent auditors completed a forensic audit of the welfare program, according to media reports. But the attorney general’s office, which has authority over lawsuits filed on behalf of the state, had to give the agency the green light.

“We wanted this suit to be the best possible suit for the people of Mississippi and we weren’t going to work on any artificial timelines to get a final product,” Michelle Williams, a spokesperson the attorney general’s office, told Mississippi Today last week.

At the center of the welfare scandal is the state’s decision to contract with New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center and another nonprofit called Family Resource Center of North Mississippi to run a state-sanctioned program called Families First for Mississippi. John Davis was the director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services at the time, answering to the governor who appointed him, Phil Bryant. Christi Webb ran the nonprofit in the north.

By 2017, the second year of Davis’ administration, the state was making unprecedented up-front, multi-million dollar payments to the two nonprofits. Most of the money came from a flexible federal block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF.

The lawsuit seeks to establish that Davis and Nancy New agreed together to disregard federal laws that stipulate how states may spend federal welfare dollars. Davis would push millions to the two nonprofits, which used the funds on pet projects, and in exchange, the nonprofits would pay for things that Davis wanted, such as hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contracts to his family members and wrestler friends and luxury travel arrangements for himself, the lawsuit says.

“That illegal quid pro quo agreement and conspiracy between Davis and New resulted in all of the transfers of TANF funds for non-TANF purposes,” the lawsuit reads.

Mississippi Department of Human Services is asking the court for damages of $23.3 million from Davis and $19.4 million from Nancy New and her nonprofit. These figures represent many of the same expenditures.

But the lawsuit also asserts that the people and organizations who received funding from the nonprofits, who are named as defendants, are also liable because they knew they were receiving payment indirectly from MDHS, “which was not designed or authorized to donate public funds for the private enrichment of wealthy individuals or organizations.”

The lawsuit also says none of the recipients possessed special skills that would allow them to be paid as a contractor for the state’s anti-poverty program, and that they knew they were selected despite lacking experience or qualifications in TANF programming and without a competitive selection process.

The civil complaint represents just the first step of the state’s pursuit of repayment, and attorneys may amend the filing to add defendants when the discovery process is underway.

Circumstances outlined in the lawsuit echo Mississippi Today’s reporting in its investigative series, “The Backchannel,” including Brett Favre’s involvement in the use of MDHS funds to purchase personal investments in the pharmaceutical start-up Prevacus, which was developing a treatment for concussions.

Favre already knew that Nancy New had access to millions in few-strings-attached federal grant funds because he got her to pay $5 million towards the new volleyball stadium that the quarterback was credited with helping build at their alma mater University of Southern Mississippi, texts show.

Favre encouraged his business partner, Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham, “to solicit Nancy New to use MDHS grant proceeds to invest in the stock of Prevacus,” the lawsuit reads.

“She has strong connections and gave me 5 million for Vball facility via grant money. Offer her whatever you feel like,” Favre wrote Vanlandingham by text, Mississippi Today first reported.

This text came just two days after the two men met with then-Gov. Phil Bryant to discuss how to elevate and find funding for the company.

While the lawsuit highlights the Prevacus payments — which are also the subject of criminal charges against New and Davis — it does not scrutinize the role of the former governor Phil Bryant, who was also offered stock in the company.

During his last year in office, Bryant used his political influence to help advance Prevacus’ interests. The governor was set to accept the stock after he left office, texts show, but arrests derailed his arrangement.

These details do not appear in the initial civil complaint filed Monday.

The lawsuit describes the Jan. 2, 2019, meeting at Favre’s home, during which he, Vanlandingham, Davis and Nancy and Zach New discussed the deal. On paper, the parties agreed that the News would pay Prevacus $1.7 million in exchange for the promise that Prevacus would locate its clinical trial sites in Mississippi. Later, the News would funnel more money into an offshoot called PreSolMD, which Vanlandingham said was developing a preventative cream.

“That representation of that motive or purpose, for investing $1.7 million of TANF funds into Prevacus and/or PreSolMD, was false,” the lawsuit reads. “The written Agreement was a sham, as it concealed the material fact that the actual purpose of the transaction was financially to benefit Defendants Nancy New, Zach New, Jesse New, Jacob Vanlandingham, Brett Favre, Prevacus and PreSolMD.”

The New nonprofit also paid Favre individually $1.1 million under a contract with Favre Enterprises that required the athlete to “speak at three different public events, and one ‘keynote address,’ and that Favre sign autographs at events promoting MCEC itself.”

Neither Favre nor his company, the lawsuit reads, “ever performed any such speaking or autograph ‘services.’ Certainly no services were performed by Favre that had anything to do with the pursuit of lawful TANF purposes.”

The lawsuit asks for a $3.2 million judgement against Favre and $1.1 million against his company. It also asks for $2.1 million from Vanlandingham and his companies.

The civil complaint also chronicles how Davis’ brother-in-law Brian Smith and his nephew Austin Smith, the DiBiase wrestlers, friends of the wrestlers, Brett Favre and his pharmaceutical venture, and other football players came to receive millions in welfare funds.

While Davis was living at the same residence as the Smiths, he got the nonprofits to pay his sister’s husband Brian Smith or his companies over $600,000 in a nine-month span, including a $150,000 lump sum on his first pretend day of employment and $365,050 through a fake “lease” on a building that did not exist. Davis also arranged for the nonprofits to pay his 24-year-old nephew Austin Smith, who also lived at the same house, $426,397 over 17 months. They said he was teaching coding skills to needy students.

“He was not,” the lawsuit reads.

A Hinds County grand jury reindicted Davis in late March on new bribery and conspiracy charges. The new indictment says he acted in concert with or aided, among others, his sister, Twyla Smith, and her husband, the brother-in-law Brian Smith, but officials have not charged any of the Smiths.

After developing a close relationship with Teddy DiBiase Jr., Davis elevated the wrestler within the department and arranged for him and his companies to receive payment from the nonprofits, the lawsuit says. The wrestler received over $3 million in anti-poverty funds to, among other things, “address the multiple needs of inner-city youth,” the lawsuit reads, though he possessed no qualifications to provide TANF services. He received duplicate payments of $700,000 from each nonprofit, “but not in exchange for services actually performed by Teddy DiBiase,” the lawsuit reads.

“Teddy DiBiase, who spent most of his workday hours accompanying John Davis at MDHS offices and on trips, made no substantial effort to supply any such contractual services, either as an individual or through any organization or entity,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit says Nancy New’s other son Jess New, an attorney and director of the Mississippi State Oil and Gas Board, helped arrange legal entities for Teddy DiBiase so the wrestler could receive more welfare funds.

Davis also directed New to transfer $30,000 in TANF funds to the Northeast Mississippi Football Coaches Association, the lawsuit says, as a reward for the organization selecting Teddy DiBiase as its 2018 banquet speaker.

Teddy DiBiase’s brother Brett DiBiase also received duplicate payments from each of the nonprofits totaling $600,000 and “never performed services of any significance which served any lawful TANF purpose.” Brett DiBiase, who also went to a luxury rehab clinic in Malibu on the nonprofit’s dime and was paid as a contractor while he was there, is the only TANF subrecipient to face criminal charges. He pleaded guilty to fraud in 2020 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The lawsuit also alleges the luxury treatment center, Rise in Malibu, knew or should have known they were receiving funds illegally, and names the facility as a defendant.

Davis got the nonprofit to pay for his travel, including first class flights, a luxury hotel suite and a chauffeured limousine, to visit Brett DiBiase in California while he was in treatment.

The lawsuit says Teddy DiBiase urged Davis to divert $1.7 million in TANF funds to his father Ted DiBiase Sr.’s ministry called Heart of David. The department contracted directly with the ministry to provide services for eligible needy people. “After receiving TANF funds pursuant to those contracts, however, they substantially ignored all lawful TANF purposes (and all of the interests of all potential beneficiaries or lawful TANF services).”

Ted DiBiase Sr. used some of the money for his personal expenses, did not maintain any personnel files or a financial management system, and while his organization maintained a website, one of the only visible, public facing products of the program, “the website content was entirely created at MDHS expense by an employee of MDHS, as ordered by John Davis,” the lawsuit reads. Davis, Webb and Family Resource Center employee Amy Harris also arranged for the nonprofit to pay Ted DiBiase Sr. a lump sum of $250,000 for motivational speaking.

When he received the check, Ted DiBiase Sr. emailed his sons, “Look what I got today!” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit asks for almost $2.9 million in damages from Teddy DiBiase and the same from his companies, almost $2 million from Ted DiBiase Sr., $1.7 million from Heart of David, $824,258 from Brett DiBiase, $48,000 from his company Restore2 LLC, and $160,000 from Rise in Malibu.

The lawsuit says Teddy DiBiase Jr. also urged Davis to divert TANF funds to a consulting and management services contractor Adam Such. Davis got Webb to pay Such $250,000, the lawsuit says, to pretend to operate a “Center for Excellence” and a “referral network,” though “nothing of substance was expected of or delivered by Such.”

Davis similarly arranged for TANF money to go to Teddy DiBiase’s business associate Nick Coughlin, an aspiring actor and reality TV contestant who worked for powerful law firm Butler Snow and in the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office in 2020, though he is not an attorney. His degree is in business and marketing from Mississippi College, according to his resume. His resume says his skills are in marketing, brand management, economic development and motivational speaking.

Coughlin received almost $169,000 “to perform vague tasks such as having ‘conversations with industry leaders,’” the lawsuit reads, though he and his company “never engaged in any substantial activity … much less did they do anything toward pursuing lawful TANF purposes.”

Former linebacker and Jackson native Lacoste, described as “active in political affairs in Mississippi,” the lawsuit says, knew or should have known that Davis ran a government agency charged with assisting the disadvantaged when the athlete proposed the director divert money to his fitness program. His company Victory Sports Foundation received $1.3 million to conduct “fitness boot camps” in Flowood, Madison and Pascagoula, the lawsuit says, which were not lawful under TANF guidelines.

The lawsuit asks for $1.3 million in damages from Lacoste and his company.

Both nonprofits paid Marcus Dupree large salaries to act as a “celebrity endorser” and “motivational speaker,” and the New nonprofit effectively purchased and paid the mortgage on a 15-acre property in Flora in the name of Dupree’s nonprofit, Marcus Dupree Foundation, but which the athlete used as his private residence.

The lawsuit asks for $371,000 in damages from Dupree and his foundation.

The lawsuit also attempts to recoup funds from four other entities that it says illegally received TANF funds, SouthTec, Inc., Chase Computer Services Inc., Warren Washington Issaquena Sharkey Community Action Agency and Soul City Hospitality. Mississippi Today first reported that Jackson restauranteur Jeff Good’s nonprofit, Soul City Hospitality, received federal funds through a sublease agreement with the New nonprofit for a project that was supposed to turn “ugly” produce into meals for poor residents. The program fed no one.

The lawsuit asks for damages, plus additional awards for legal fees, from the following defendants:

• John Davis ($23,256,224)
• Brian Smith ($615,894)
• Austin Smith ($426,398)
• Nancy New ($19,403,504)
• Mississippi Community Education Center ($19,403,504)
• New Learning Resources Foundation Inc. ($6,513,393)
• Zachary New ($2,100,000)
• Jesse New ($2,654,221)
• Magnolia Strategies LLC ($554,221)
• Family Resource Center of North Mississippi ($3,852,720)
• Christi Webb ($3,852,710)
• Amy Harris ($250,000)
• Brett Favre ($3,200,000)
• Favre Enterprises ($1,100,000)
• Jake Vanlandingham ($2,100,000)
• Prevacus, Inc. ($2,100,000)
• PreSolMD, LLC ($2,100,000)
• Ted DiBiase Sr. ($1,971,223)
• Heart of David Ministries Inc. ($1,721,223)
• Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr. ($2,897,487)
• Priceless Ventures LLC ($2,197,487)
• Familia Orientem LLC ($700,000)
• Brett DiBiase ($824,258)
• Restore2 LLC ($48,000)
• Rise in Malibu ($160,000)
• Adam Such ($250,000)
• SBGI LLC ($250,000)
• Nicholas Coughlin ($168,733)
• NCC Ventures LLC ($168,733)
• Paul LaCoste ($1,309,183)
• Victory Sports Foundation, Inc. ($1,309,183)
• Marcus Dupree ($371,000)
• Marcus Dupree Foundation ($371,000)
• SouthTec, Inc. ($137,935)
• Chase Computer Services, Inc. ($375,750)
• Soul City Hospitality LLC ($200,000)
• Warren Washington Issaquena Sharkey Community Action Agency ($49,190)

Many of the dollar figures calculated in the lawsuit represent overlapping debts, meaning the total the state could recoup from all defendants is roughly $24 million.

For example, the amount owed by Brett Favre, $3.2 million, includes the same $1.1 million owed by Favre Enterprises, so the total that the state seeks to recoup from those two is $3.2 million.

While Favre has returned $1.1 million to the state, the money is sitting in an account at the State Auditor’s Office, which means, for purposes of the lawsuit, he still owes the money to the welfare department.

Because the money flowed from Davis’ department and most of it through Nancy New’s nonprofit, the lawsuit claims Davis and Nancy New are jointly liable for the large amount that they and others illegally spent. If any of the subrecipients pay their damages, that would likely reduce the debts for Davis and Nancy New.

If the court assesses damages, the welfare department can force the defendants to disclose their assets and ability to pay to ensure the state recoups as much as possible. In cases where the court determines damages are owed due to fraudulent actions, the defendants will not be able to get rid of those debts by filing for bankruptcy.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has declined several interview requests from Mississippi Today about the welfare scandal, but it said in a statement in 2020 that it was waiting for the state’s investigation to conclude before attempting itself to claw back misspent funds.

John Davis and a young former procurement officer for the agency, Gregory “Latimer” Smith, are now the only people with pending criminal charges related to the welfare scandal. Smith, who is facing conspiracy, embezzlement and fraud charges, did not allegedly receive any of the funds himself. Hinds County recently charged Davis in a superseding indictment and the judge rescheduled his trial for Sept. 26, 2022.

Nancy New and Zach New, who pleaded guilty to separate federal charges for bilking public school funds for their private school, recently received plea deals in the state welfare fraud case. The deals ensured that they would receive no additional time beyond their federal sentence for their crimes in the welfare case. They agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.

None of the other civil suit defendants have faced criminal charges, which come with a higher burden of proof than civil charges.

Federal authorities have also not brought any criminal charges in the welfare scandal.

The U.S. Attorneys Office and FBI have declined to comment, but recent plea deals indicate their investigation is ongoing.

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