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One of the most important deadlines for college financial aid in Mississippi is right around the corner: On March 31, applications come due for the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students (HELP) grant, the state financial aid program that covers all four years of college tuition for qualifying working-class students.

This is a potentially life-changing opportunity that’s important not to miss, said Stephen Brown, the assistant director of outreach for Get2College, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of students attending college statewide. 

High school seniors who meet the income limitations, have a 2.5 or higher GPA and scored at least a 20 on the ACT can apply online via the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid’s website. After completing the online application, prospective college students hoping to be considered for the HELP grant must also submit supporting documents by April 30.

One of these supporting documents is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the cumbersome paperwork required to receive loans and scholarships. 

Students must complete the FAFSA in order to be considered for the HELP grant. Yet at 108 questions long, the FAFSA is notoriously intimidating. “It freaks families out,” Brown said. The form’s intimidating reputation can dissuade some families — namely working class, Black and brown families who are most likely to qualify for the HELP grant — from apply for financial aid altogether.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Below, Mississippi Today has compiled a short guide to filing the FAFSA along with some advice from Brown on common errors and frequently asked questions. This is by no means a comprehensive document — there are tons of resources out there to help readers apply for financial aid. Get2College, college financial aid offices and high school guidance counselors are particularly eager to help. 

Getting started

Before sitting down to start the FAFSA, Brown said he advises filing students and their parents to make sure they have on-hand the following documents:

• Personal identification, such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and/or permanent resident cards (if applicable)
• Federal income tax returns, including the 1040 form and schedules, and W2s for each parent that files
  • The FAFSA uses federal tax returns from the “prior-prior year” — essentially the taxes you filed two years ago. This year’s FAFSA, which is for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year, uses your 2019 tax information.
• Financial records such as bank statements, investments (excluding retirement savings), and untaxed income, including child support
• Documents reflecting parent’s marital status
• Court papers for legal guardianship (if applicable)

The final piece of prep work is to create a Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID, which students and parents can do online. This serves as the log-in for studentaid.gov and signature for filling out the FAFSA. Students and parents typically both need to make an FSA ID. 

Brown said it’s important not lose, forget, or confuse your FSA ID.

“With the FSA ID, for every family that I work with, not only do I tell them to write the FSA ID down, but I also tell them to take a picture of it, like a screenshot, and email it to themselves,” Brown said. “Keep that in a secure place — somewhere where you can access that electronically in case the paper (copy) gets lost.” 

Completing the FAFSA

The FAFSA asks for five main buckets of information: Student demographics, school selection, dependency status, parent demographics, and financial information. Mississippi Today has broken down each of these sections below:

Student demographics

This section asks for the student’s demographic and contact information. Much of it will auto-populate from when the student made an FSA ID. 

While this section is relatively straightforward, Brown noted a couple common mistakes:

• Male students, barring very narrow exceptions, must register for the Selective Service System, the government agency in charge of military conscription, in order to receive federal financial aid.
• When asked, all students must select “yes” if they are interested in being considered for federal work study. Students will not be considered for work study if they select “I don’t know,” Brown said. 

Dependency status

This section contains a list of questions that determine whether a student is dependent or independent for the purposes of the FAFSA. It’s not possible to choose whether to file as a dependent or independent student, Brown noted. Congress has set strict FAFSA-specific criteria for dependency status — even a student that lives on their own, files their own taxes, and financial supports themselves may not be considered independent.

“I often hear families say, ‘Oh well my daughter worked this year and she filed her own taxes so she’s gonna go independent,’” Brown said. “You don’t get to choose to be independent. There are very strict criteria that would make you an independent or dependent student.” 

Students who are in a legal guardianship are considered independent students. 

Parent demographics

This section asks for demographic and contact information from the student’s parent(s). Only parents of dependent students need to complete this section. 

Brown said this can be one of the trickiest sections. He noted a number of common errors, including:

• The FAFSA requires information from the parent(s) a student lives with the majority of the time. This often confuses parents who are divorced or separated; the parent who the student lives with files the FAFSA, not the one who claims the student on taxes. If parents are divorced but still live together, both need to complete this section.
• If a student lives with another family member, like a grandparent, but their parents are around, they must still use their parent’s information. 

Brown also noted that some parents can be caught off guard that the FAFSA asks whether they attended college. He said that part is only used for demographic information, not to determine how much aid your child will receive. 

Financial information

This is where taxes and other financial information come into play. It is dispersed through the student and parent demographics sections. 

Rather than enter tax information by hand, Brown encourages families to use the IRS data retrieval tool, which electronically transfers federal tax information from the correct year to the FAFSA form. This makes it a lot easier to fill out the financial information, Brown said. 

Don’t panic if the tool doesn’t work, though. Brown said there are a couple main reasons why the tool may not work: If a student or parent still owes money on their taxes, their names were misspelled on their tax forms, if they’ve been the victim of identity theft. If the tool doesn’t work, it does not mean you cannot file the FAFSA — you can still file, but you will have to enter your information manually. 

“There’s a big misconception, especially with low income families, if they didn’t file taxes, don’t file taxes, or are on disability that it means they can’t complete the FAFSA,” Brown said. “You absolutely can complete the FAFSA.” 

School selection

Students can select to send their FAFSA information to up to 10 colleges. Brown recommends listing at least one college in Mississippi.

FAFSA is signed and submitted. Now what?

All there is to do is wait. Online applications typically take within three to five days to process, while paper ones can take about seven to 10 days, according to the Department of Education. 

After the application is processed, students will receive a copy of their Student Aid Report, which lists their Expected Family Contribution and determines eligibility for Pell Grants. This form is also shared with the financial aid offices at the colleges listed on the student’s FAFSA. They will use it to determine how much financial aid they will offer a student. 

At this stage, students and parents can also file an appeal with a college’s financial aid office if they’ve noticed an error on the Student Aid Report or are unhappy with the amount of aid they’ve received. Brown encourages families to also appeal if their financial situation has changed drastically due to the pandemic but it’s not reflected on their prior-prior tax returns. 

Additional resources

• Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid
• Get2College has a lot of tips and tricks for filing the FAFSA
• SwiftStudent is a free online resource that helps create financial aid appeal letters. 

The post Here’s how to apply for the FAFSA appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The bottom 60% of Mississippi’s income earners would be paying more taxes under legislation that has passed the House while the top 40% would be paying less, according to an analysis conducted by a Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank.

A person in the top 1% with average income of $924,000 would pay $28,610 less in combined state taxes under the sweeping legislation authored by Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, while the next 4% of state income earners would save about $3,760 in taxes on average. Based on the analysis conducted by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, those earning $49,100 or above would pay less in taxes, while individuals earning less than that would pay more in state taxes than they currently are paying.

A person earning $11,000 per year would pay $220 more in taxes, while a person earning $23,000 would pay an additional $270 in taxes, based on the analysis.

The analysis was of the major components of the bill that would:

• Phase out the state’s personal income tax.
• Reduce the state’s 7% tax on groceries to 3.5%.
• Increase the tax on cigarettes 50 cents per pack.
• Increase the sales tax on other retail items 2.5 cents on each dollar spent. That would raise the sales tax on most retail items to 9.5%. Numerous big ticket items, such as farm equipment vehicles, manufacturing equipment and airplanes, which are taxed at lower rates, also would be increased 2.5 cents on each dollar spent.

“We know for sure that the combined impact of the tax plan will make Mississippi’s tax system more inequitable,” said Kyra Roby, a policy analyst for One Voice that advocates for Mississippi’s poor and working families.

House supporters of the massive tax restructuring bill have said the proposal will be revenue neutral at the onset when the sales tax is increased, the grocery tax is cut from 7% to 4.5% and the income tax is eliminated for to bottom almost 60% of wage earners. During the next five years, the grocery tax will be cut to 3.5% and the income tax will be phased out in as few as 10 years. The bill contains a trigger that would postpone a reduction in the income tax in any year it does not meet specified growth standards.

Gunn and House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, have said the bill would spur growth in the state while broadening the tax base by taxing consumption — sales and excise taxes instead of taxing income. Gunn has long stated as a goal moving the state from taxing income to taxing consumption.

The impact of the bill has been the subject of much debate since it was unveiled on Feb. 22 and passed on the House floor the following day. It is now pending in the Senate. The study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy — known as a progressive think tank that provides analysis of federal, state and local taxes — is the first publicly released analysis of how socioeconomic groups of Mississippians would be impacted by the bill. Roby said the Institute used its tax modeling tool to reach its conclusion.

Both Gov. Tate Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have voiced concerns about the bill raising taxes — primarily sales taxes and excise taxes — on certain “big ticket items,” such as airplanes and farm equipment. Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, has requested a study on the impact of the legislation from the state economist. That study is pending and presumably will be concluded before the Senate decides whether to take up the proposal. Other conservative-leaning groups, such as Empower Mississippi, have generally found the bill would positively impact the state.

A study released Monday by Joshua Hendrickson and Ronald Mau, economics professors at the University of Mississippi, found that the bill would increase the state’s gross domestic product by $371 million annually by making the tax structure more efficient. In general, the study found that the income tax, which the House plan would eliminate, creates inefficiencies in the economy while a tax on consumption, such as the sales tax which would be increased by the House plan, does the opposite.

Gunn said the Ole Miss study “further demonstrates” the plan “is based on sound tax policy. Eliminating the income tax will reward work, savings and investment, and will increase the size of our state economy, all while maintaining the revenue we need to satisfy priorities. Mississippians need the benefits of this tax relief now. I encourage Lt. Gov. Hosemann and the Senate to work with us to pass this tax reform this session.”

The 7% sales tax already is the state’s largest single source of revenue. One Voice and others argue the sales tax results in a higher tax burden for poor people since it forces them to spend a larger share of their income to pay for basic needs. Gunn said his proposal reduces the grocery tax to help offset the impact on the state’s poor of raising the general sales tax by 2.5 cents on each dollar spent. But Roby said the bill still would result in a bigger tax burden on lower income earners.

Even though the state’s personal income rate is one of the lowest in the nation, analysis done by One Voice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said it is still the only state tax where wealthy Mississippians pay a larger share of their income than do poor Mississippians.

Overall under the current state tax structure, “The lower and middle individuals share a greater burden than the state’s wealthiest,” Roby said.

For instance, those earning less than $16,100 pay 10.2% of their income on state and local taxes, primarily because of Mississippi’s high sales tax rate, which includes the 7% tax on groceries. Those in the middle — earning between $43,000 and $77,500 pay — pay 9.2% of their income on state and local taxes. Those earning more than $162,200 800 pay 6.5% of their income on state and local taxes.

The study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said the House bill would place even more of the tax burden on Mississippi’s working poor and middle class.

“We believe the House proposal will make life harder for Mississippi children, working families and senior citizens,” said Brandon Jones, policy director at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Wesley Tharpe, deputy director of state policy research with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said, “Cutting the grocery tax on its own would be good policy and good for working and low income families, but the savings would likely not be enough to offset the increase from such a significant increase in the sales tax.”

On the other hand, the analysis by the Ole Miss professors found: “This proposed tax reform aims to reduce inefficiencies in the state’s tax system and establish a more competitive tax environment. In principle, a consumption-based tax system has some desirable characteristics in comparison to an income-based tax system.”

The Ole Miss study, in contrast to the beliefs of Roby at One Voice and Jones with the Southern Poverty Law Center, found that the proposal will be near revenue neutral and that they believe their findings of how the changes could improve the overall economy “are conservative.”

The Ole Miss professors concluded, “We indeed find that the proposal is close to revenue-neutral. The elimination of the individual income tax’s inefficiencies would increase real GDP by $371 million per year.”

The post Study: House tax proposal increases burden on poor Mississippians appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who wields significant control over the state of Mississippi’s budget, said he is open to appropriating funds to the city of Jackson, where thousands of residents are in their fourth week without running water.

A historic winter storm in mid-February froze water plant equipment and burst many pipes in the capital city, and at least 40,000 residents — mostly Black — were without water for nearly three weeks. Today, while city officials said water pressure has been restored to “95% of the city,” about 5,000 Jackson residents are still without water. City leaders say they need major investment from the state to replace their entire water and sewage system, which is estimated to cost about $2 billion.

Hosemann, in a one-on-one interview on Monday with Mississippi Today, said that he considers all options on the table in terms of financially supporting Jackson, including through several bills pending in the Legislature and potentially sending some of the state’s share of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Congress is expected to pass later this week.

“I’ve lived in Jackson more than 50 years. More than half my life has been spent here,” Hosemann told Mississippi Today. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it better, and I want to make it better now. There’s a water crisis, and we want to help. Where we can help them with the funding, I want to do that. Jackson is the capital of Mississippi. It deserves to be supported as such.”

Hosemann continued: “The people that are responsible are the leaders of the city, and they need to come up with a cogent plan that explains how much they need and what they’re going to do with funding they may get. That gives us more room to support them monetarily.”

Hosemann and Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba are scheduled to meet Tuesday morning to discuss the crisis and how the state can help. Lumumba, who wrote a letter to state leaders last week asking for an initial emergency appropriation of $47 million, met with Speaker of the House Philip Gunn on Friday.

READ MORE: Talks begin at Capitol to secure state funding for Jackson water crisis

In addition to considering potential state funding, Hosemann and his staff studied the $1.9 trillion stimulus package Congress is expected to pass this week. The lieutenant governor on Monday said he believed there are several pots of money within that package that could be appropriated to Jackson for work on its water system.

Questions about whether lawmakers will support the city have swirled after tension between Hosemann and Lumumba — long whispered about in the halls of the Capitol — came to light on March 4 during a mayoral debate ahead of 2021 municipal elections. At the heart of the tiff between the lieutenant governor and mayor is control of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, which state leaders have tried for years to wrest from the city.

In 2016, lawmakers approved a bill to take over the airport and replace the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority with a regional board made up of state, county, and city appointees.

That law, however, has not gone into effect after the city joined a federal lawsuit to block the takeover. That lawsuit has continued, and city officials have said the state’s motives were race-based. Currently, the city controls the airport with its own board. All board members are African American. The lawmakers who pushed and passed the 2016 legislation are white.

“I sat down with the lieutenant governor to talk about Jackson’s infrastructure problem,” Lumumba said during the debate, referencing a meeting that occurred before the current water crisis. “We had a conversation that lasted for about an hour and a half, and he asked everyone to leave the room only to say, ‘Mayor, I need you to give me my airport, and I look at it for about $30 million.’”

Lumumba continued: “Not only am I supposed to be dumb, I’m also supposed to be cheap.”

When asked on Monday about the mayor’s comments, Hosemann said the inference that infrastructure funding from the state would be held up over any airport-related business “is completely inaccurate.”

“My concern about the work we have to do on Jackson’s water is a totally separate matter,” Hosemann said. “In regards to pending litigation between the city and state over the airport, I did speak about that with the mayor and said I would like to settle that case. But there is not a quid pro quo here. (The current water crisis) occurred after our meeting. We were in discussions about a number of things about the city, and I told him it was confidential. I intend to honor my side of the bargain.”

When asked if the airport would be a consideration during debate about whether to provide Jackson with state funding for its current crisis, Hosemann said, “Absolutely not. I just disagree with that.”

Meanwhile, a House bill introduced by Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, on Monday seeks legislative approval to allow the city of Jackson to hold a summer referendum to pass a one-cent sales tax increase. If approved, that new revenue — an estimated $14 million per year — could be used to back large bonds that the city would use to revamp its water and sewer system.

The House bill was dropped after a Friday meeting between Lumumba and Speaker Gunn in which the mayor asked for support of the city’s one-cent sales tax increase. Lumumba also asked Gunn to consider the $47 million emergency appropriation for specific projects.

While Gunn made no promises, several of the meeting’s attendees expressed optimism that future talks between the speaker and mayor would continue as the 2021 legislative session approaches its scheduled end of April 4.

Hosemann said he’ll hear the mayor out in their Tuesday meeting and will work with senators to determine the best course of action. He added: “Everything is on the table.”

“I think asking questions (of the city) about a specific plan is healthy and important,” Hosemann said. “But we’re not going to ignore the crisis or the people affected. That’s not who I am personally, whether I’ve been an elected official or not. The city has its leadership, the state has its leadership, and we want to make sure we’re helpful to any citizen in a crisis.”

READ MORE: As Jackson residents suffer during historic water crisis, state leaders keep their distance

The post Lt. Gov. Hosemann on Jackson water crisis: “We want to help.” appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Whether the light at the end of the tunnel is the end of the pandemic or just the light of the variant train, at least the current low number of cases are leading to a break for hospitals and medical staffs across the state.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Slow Recovery appeared first on Mississippi Today.

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package poised to be approved by Congress offers a sizable financial incentive for Mississippi to expand Medicaid to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor.

Mississippi Senate Public Health Committee Chair Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said if the legislation ultimately becomes law in coming days, the package would provide Mississippi roughly $300 million a year for two years if state leaders would agree to expand Medicaid. Bryan said he bases that number on estimates provided to him by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid and other health care groups.

Mississippi is one of just 12 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

“For a number of years, the federal government has been offering us a $1 million a day to take care of sick people,” Bryan said. “Now they are offering $1 million a day to take that other $1 million a day. You can’t make this stuff up.”

The coronavirus relief bill, based on information from the American Hospital Association, would provide the incentives to expand Medicaid for the 12 states that have not by increasing the matching dollars they receive from their federal government for their traditional Medicaid program by 5%.

Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, receives the highest matching rate from the federal government. The federal government normally has paid about 75% of the cost of treating Medicaid recipients in Mississippi with the state paying the rest.

READ MORE: Mississippi missed out on $7 billion when it did not expand Medicaid. Will that figure jump to $20 billion?

In recent times, based on language in past COVID-19 relief bills that have become law, the amount of the match the federal government pays of Mississippi’s Medicaid costs has increased to 84.5%.  The federal match rate averages 56.2% for all 50 states.

If the Biden legislation — the American Rescue Plan Act — ultimately passes Congress and is signed into law by Biden, that matching rate for the regular Medicaid program could increase to nearly 90% for two years for Mississippi if state leaders opted to expand Medicaid.

Thus far, Mississippi’s Republican political leaders, led by Gov. Tate Reeves, have been adamantly opposed to expanding Medicaid. They maintain the state cannot afford the costs.

Under current law, the federal government pays 90% of the costs for treating people covered under Medicaid expansion, and the state pays 10% of the costs. Estimates show that as many as 300,000 more Mississippians could be covered if Medicaid is expanded in the state. Many of those covered under the expansion would be people who work in jobs that do not provide private insurance and do not earn enough to afford to purchase private coverage.

“We must work to find ways to provide healthcare for all Mississippians, especially in rural areas, but Medicaid expansion is not the answer,” Reeves has said.

When Mississippi House Medicaid Chair Joey Hood, R-Ackerman, recently was asked if Mississippi might agree to the expansion if the federal match rate for the traditional Medicaid program was increased by 5% as proposed in the legislation, he said there was no need to even consider the issue until the bill becomes law.

“It still has to pass both chambers,” Hood said.

Earlier this session, the Mississippi Senate rejected Medicaid expansion on a straight party line vote with all Republicans voting no. But during a recent appearance before the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute/Capitol Press Corps, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, indicated Medicaid expansion could be an issue studied during the summer by senators while the Legislature is not in session.

“It’s no surprise… that the delivery of health care is on my agenda for next year,” Hosemann said. “And I anticipate that we will have public hearings concerning how that will proceed.”

The current Mississippi Medicaid program covers primarily poor children, poor pregnant women, the disabled and the elderly, but generally does not cover able-bodied adults other than pregnant women and a small group of caregivers.

As of February, the Division of Medicaid website showed about 750,000 enrolled in the Mississippi Medicaid program. Another 48,200 children whose parents make too much for them to be on Medicaid are enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program — another federal program.

While many state leaders argue that the state cannot afford Medicaid expansion, others claim it would save the state money while expanding the economy and aiding hospitals that are currently treating patients who have no ability to pay. The Mississippi Hospital Association has endorsed a hybrid Medicaid expansion that has been approved in other states.

“Mississippi will make money if we expand Medicaid,” Bryan said even before the added incentive in the U.S. House COVID-19 relief bill was unveiled. “There will be more money in the state treasury if we expand Medicaid than if we don’t.”

READ MORE: Could Indiana’s ‘conservative’ version of Medicaid expansion work for Mississippi?

The post Congress poised to offer Mississippi more money to expand Medicaid appeared first on Mississippi Today.

WJTV morning anchor/reporter Kayla Thompson and Mississippi Today reporter Will Stribling join host Adam Ganucheau to discuss covering the 2021 Jackson water crisis. They discuss what residents affected by the crisis have said as they have been without water for three weeks and the politics of the moment.

Listen here:

The post Podcast: Covering the Jackson water crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Revenue to fund the Mississippi Department of Transportation from the 18.4-cent per gallon motor fuel tax grew nearly 40% between 1989 and 2019.

During a similar time, sales tax revenue grew by about 156% and personal income tax revenue increased a whopping 365%.

Revenue from the sales tax and personal income tax provide about 70% of the state’s share of funding for education, public health and many other areas of state government. But that revenue does not go for state transportation needs. The gas/diesel tax provides more than half of state funding for the Department of Transportation.

The fact that gas tax revenue is growing at a relatively slow rate compared to the income tax and sales tax is an example of why various groups — ranging from the Mississippi Economic Council to the Legislature’s own oversight committee — have argued that additional funds are needed to aid with the maintenance and construction on state highways. The motor fuel tax simply is not growing fast enough to keep up with inflation.

In August 2018 state leaders — then-Gov. Phil Bryant, House Speaker Philip Gunn and then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, who is now governor — gave themselves a collective pat on the back for enacting a lottery in a special session and dedicating the first $80 million of that revenue annually for work on state highways. They viewed the lottery as a way to avoid raising the gasoline tax.

While studies by the MEC and others indicated an additional $300 million per year was needed to address state highway needs, everyone conceded the lottery revenue was better than nothing.

But if Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and his Senate colleagues get their way, the state will essentially be back at near nothing in terms of new revenue for Mississippi’s highways.

The Senate, with Hosemann’s support, has voted to transfer those lottery funds from the state highway system to the road and bridge needs of local governments.

In the 2018 special session, the much-ballyhooed agreement was that the lottery revenue would go toward the state system and a transfer of use tax funds from education, law enforcement and other state needs would go to local governments for transportation needs. The lottery funds going to the state system would be capped at $80 million annually, while it was anticipated the use tax funds would generate about $120 annually for local roads and bridges. And that would be a growing source of revenue for local governments, as the use tax — a tax on internet purchases — continues to grow.

Earlier this session on a bizarre night when the Senate was in session past midnight, members by a 40-10 margin rejected the bill that transferred the lottery funds from the state system to local roads and bridges. But, as is often the case in the Mississippi Legislature, seldom is an issue actually dead. Senate leaders that night took up a more comprehensive transportation bill that included the same language to transfer the funds.

The bill also increased the weight limits for large trucks carrying agriculture products and other goods and transferred the Department of Transportation law enforcement officers to Public Safety.

Senate Appropriations Chairs Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, offered what he thought was “a no brainer amendment” to remove the lottery revenue from the bill.

“We already voted this down once,” Hospon reasoned. But lo and behold, the Senate changed its mind, rejecting Hopson’s amendment and transferring the lottery revenue to local roads and bridges.

In the House, Transportation Committee Chair Charles Busby, R-Pascagoula, said he opposes the Senate plan to transfer the lottery revenue.

Busby said he feared in the August 2018 special session the lottery revenue for state roads and bridges “was a vulnerable revenue stream. People would be reaching out for it often. This is a demonstration of that. Just as I feared.”

Hosemann said the money is needed on the local level to fix bridges that will be impacted by the proposed increase in the weight limits. He said the increase in the weight limits on Mississippi’s often decrepit roads and bridges is needed to ensure the state’s farmers and others are competitive with counterparts in surrounding states. Busby pointed out that about 137 bridges on the state system will have to be posted to prevent the heavier traffic on them if the Senate weight limit increase is passed.

Without the lottery revenue, there will be less money to fix those state bridges that would be impacted by heavier weight limits. The only other revenue dedicated to the state system in the August 2018 special session is expected to generate about $20 million annually.

Fight over the lottery revenue, pitting state roads and bridges against local roads and bridges, will play out during the final days of the legislative session.

The post If Senate gets its way, ballyhooed special session plan will be erased appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House Speaker Philip Gunn met with Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Friday to discuss several legislative proposals that would send the city of Jackson state funding to repair its aged and failing water and sewage system.

Meanwhile, a feud between the mayor and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann came to light this week, raising questions about whether Hosemann, a Jackson resident who has heavy influence over the state’s purse strings, is willing to provide state support to the city. Hosemann did not meet with city officials this week.

A historic winter storm in mid-February froze water plant equipment and burst many pipes, and at least 40,000 Jackson residents — mostly Black — were without water for nearly three weeks. Today, about 5,000 Jackson residents are still without water. City leaders say they need major investment from state leaders to replace its entire water and sewage system, which is estimated to cost about $2 billion.

Gunn met with Lumumba and Charles Williams, the city’s public works director, in the speaker’s office on Friday morning to discuss the crisis. The city of Jackson’s entire House delegation — seven state representatives — also sat in the meeting. The mayor made two main asks of the speaker, several meeting attendees told Mississippi Today:

• Support the Jackson city council’s recently approved 1-cent sales tax increase proposal, which requires legislative approval. The tax increase, implemented only within the city of Jackson, would generate about $14 million per year — nowhere close to the $2 billion needed to completely replace the city’s water and sewer system. But Lumumba told Gunn that new annual revenue, if lawmakers sign off and Jackson voters approve this summer, would be used to back large municipal bonds that would help the city make substantial repairs on the system in the short-term.

• Pass a state bond package totaling $47 million that would give the city immediate funding to begin necessary repairs on its water and sewer system. Lawmakers send cities and counties millions nearly every year in a large bond package, and city officials say they’ve been shorted in recent years by the Legislature. On March 3, Lumumba sent a letter to state and federal officials laying out the need for that $47 million emergency appropriation.

Gunn, a resident of the suburb Clinton, listened intently to the mayor, and several of the meeting’s attendees said the speaker seemed sympathetic to the city’s position. Gunn asked several questions of Lumumba and Williams. No promises were made, the meeting’s attendees said, but they all expressed optimism that future talks between the speaker and mayor would continue as the 2021 legislative session continues.

On Saturday, Jackson’s public works director, Charles Williams, acknowledged that even if it’s approved, the $47 million in bonds will not be nearly enough to protect Jackson’s water system from the kind of large-scale service disruptions seen over the past few weeks.

“This ask will help. It will get us started. But, it will not solve our overall infrastructure problems for the long term,” Williams told Mississippi Today. “We have a plant and we have a distribution system. Over the years, there have been many plans and studies for both, but we have not had the funding for implementation. You cannot fund what you don’t have.”

Meanwhile, details of tension between Hosemann and Lumumba — long whispered about in the halls of the Capitol — came to light Thursday night during a mayoral debate ahead of 2021 municipal elections. At the heart of the tiff between the lieutenant governor and mayor is control of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, which state leaders have tried for years to wrest from the city.

“I sat down with the lieutenant governor to talk about Jackson’s infrastructure problem,” Lumumba said during the Thursday night debate, referencing a meeting that occurred before the current crisis. “We had a conversation that lasted for about an hour and a half, and he asked everyone to leave the room only to say, ‘Mayor, I need you to give me my airport, and I look at it for about $30 million.’”

Lumumba continued: “Not only am I supposed to be dumb, I’m also supposed to be cheap.”

In 2016, lawmakers approved a bill to take over the airport and replace the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority with a regional board made up of state, county, and city appointees.

That law, however, has not gone into effect after the city joined a federal lawsuit to block the takeover. That lawsuit has continued, and city officials have said the state’s motives were race-based. Currently, the city controls the airport with its own board. All board members are African American. The lawmakers who pushed and passed the 2016 legislation are white.

Many hoped Hosemann, the most powerful Jackson resident at the Capitol, would be open to helping solve the city’s water crisis. Lumumba and Hosemann did not have contact this week, nor did their staffs. But the mayor sent Hosemann the letter requesting $47 million in emergency appropriations.

The only public comments Hosemann has made about the water crisis came on Monday, when he was asked at a press event if the state should offer financial support to the city to solve its infrastructure problems.

“If you remember during Kane Ditto’s administration, he did repair work on water and sewer,” Hosemann responded, referring to the last white Jackson mayor who left office in 1997. “So what’s happened since then? The prime mover (of solving the problem) needs to be the city itself. Those people have to come up with a reasonable plan to get their water bills out on time.”

That comment has been sharply criticized by current and former city officials, with some calling Hosemann’s comment racist and a continuation of state leaders’ attitude toward Jackson and its officials.

READ MORE: As Jackson residents suffer during historic water crisis, state leaders keep their distance

Jackson, the state’s largest city, is at least 80% Black. Statewide elected officials are white; the state of Mississippi has never elected a Black statewide official by popular vote, and legislative leaders who control the state’s budget are white. Most of the city’s white residents like Hosemann, because of more recent infrastructure upgrades in northeast Jackson and their proximity to water treatment plants, rarely experience long-term outages.

Meanwhile, residents in south and west Jackson, majority-Black areas of the city, take the brunt of the city’s infrastructure failings. And because of careful legislative gerrymandering and segregated politics, Black elected officials at the Capitol have little influence over the budget process or other major policy negotiations.

Talks between city leaders and state leaders regarding the water crisis are expected to continue between now and April 4, the scheduled end of the 2021 legislative session. At least one piece of legislation that would award state bonds to the city for its water system is expected to be filed in the House next week.

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