In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Karen Matthews, Chief Executive Officer and President of the Delta Health Alliance. Matthews talks about growing up in Fulton, Mississippi, studying engineering and accounting and how she made the pivot to healthcare.
She also shares some of the success stories of the Delta Health Alliance from the past 20 years and some of its (and the state’s) biggest challenges. Created by the late Senator Thad Cochran, DHA funds and operates 40 different healthcare initiatives in 38 Mississippi counties. Health truly does equal wealth.
Last year, the state crime lab completed an autopsy from 2011.
Today, the backlog of 1,600 autopsies for the crime lab to perform includes those where the deaths occurred in 2015.
Commissioner of Public Safety Sean Tindell recently stressed that the policy is to perform as soon as possible the autopsies needed for criminal investigations and trials.
“I will emphasize most of that backlog on autopsy reports are non-homicides..,” Tindell recently told the Legislative Budget Committee members who are working to develop a budget recommendation for the next fiscal year starting in July. “There just has not been a lot of pressure on getting them done. That is no excuse.”
He added, “I think where there is a murder or homicide we want to expedite those as soon as possible.”
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who is chair of the Budget Committee, said six years is too long to wait for any autopsy.
“The non-murders are, for example, one who contacted us was a mother and two children whose husband died unexpectedly,” Hosemann said. “They couldn’t get their life insurance benefits and that is the only money they had. With all due respect, I think those are important.”
Tindell wholeheartedly agreed and said that is why he is working to ensure all autopsies are completed in 90 days. And truth be known, Tindell, who was appointed public safety commissioner when Reeves’ term as governor began in January 2020, cannot be held responsible for a backlog, caused at least in part, by years of underfunding of the state crime lab.
The underfunding does not end with the crime lab. Point a random finger at almost any entity in state government and an example of underfunding can be found. For years, Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, has been beset with a multitude of problems and a limited amount of state revenue to address those woes. Whether it be teacher salaries or salaries for employees at multiple other governmental agencies, or aging technology or dilapidated school buildings or poor health care, the list of problems facing the state goes on and on.
Yet in about a five-year period during the last decade, about 50 tax cuts were enacted that when finally, fully phased in will take more than $700 million annually in revenue out of the state’s coffers.
Now Reeves and legislators are eyeing more tax cuts. Thanks in large part to the massive influx of federal COVID-19 relief funds that arguably helped Mississippi more than any state in the nation, state coffers are relatively flush. Many leaders are bragging about the state’s fiscal condition, taking credit for it and saying now is the time for a tax cut.
Yet, during one day of recent budget hearings, one agency head after another bemoaned the problems they face because of primarily a lack of funding. Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain reported that if he does not find a way to hire more prison guards, who have perennially been underpaid, then the federal Department of Justice is going to step in and sue because of the state’s inadequate prison conditions.
Brad White, executive director of the Department of Transportation, lamented his agency’s inability to hire employees.
“We are no longer in a position to adequately compete with the private sector,” White said.
Revenue Commissioner Chris Graham said, “Our applications (for employment) have dried up.”
State employees and teachers are paid less than their counterparts in surrounding states.
Wendy Bailey, executive director of the Department of Mental Health, said the work force for her agency has decreased by almost 4,000 since 2009.
Various studies have even cited the state’s declining workforce as one of the reasons for the struggles to fund the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System. Put simply, the reports say there are not enough workers paying into the retirement system to support it.
Back in the last decade as legislators were cutting taxes, many leaders said their goal was to starve government.
“We Republicans have campaigned for many, many years that we are for living within our means. We are for controlling spending. We are for reducing the size of government,” House Speaker Philip Gunn said in 2017 as reported by the Associated Press. “We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem. We are for reducing the tax burden.”
The governor echoed those thoughts.
“That’s what voters elected us to do. They elected us to live within our means,” Reeves said. “They believe they ought to send less money to the government. They believe that they are already overtaxed and overburdened.”
Perhaps Reeves could add that many Mississippians, whether it’s the family waiting for that autopsy report needed to collect life insurance or the child lacking a certified teacher, are also underserved.
Last week, Pfizer announced that its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 to 11. Currently, the youngest group eligible for vaccination are ages 12 to 17. Overall, minors have accounted for almost 18% of total cases in Mississippi to date.
View our data comparing the total COVID-19 cases by age group and their approval for vaccination.
View more COVID-19 in Mississippi demographic data here.
As cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations decline statewide, some schools have done away with mask requirements.
But after three pediatric deaths in the month of September and six since July, the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is pleading with schools not to drop their guards yet.
“It is really concerning that schools are dropping mask mandates and putting children at risk,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, president of the Mississippi chapter of the AAP.
The group also cites the fact that while cases and hospitalizations have declined as a whole, around one-third of total COVID-19 hospitalizations at Children’s of Mississippi are children under the age of 12.
“Acute COVID hospitalizations are increasing again it seems, and it is timed exactly with schools dropping mask requirements,” said Dr. Charlotte Hobbs, professor of pediatric infectious disease.
Most recently, two children between the ages of 11 and 17 died after contracting the virus, according to the Mississippi Department of Health. One of those was a 16-year-old football player from north Mississippi, the Sun Herald reported.
At the beginning of September, a baby died of COVID-19.
“MSAAP urges school boards, superintendents, teachers and parents to continue with masks requirements in all indoor school settings to slow the transmission of COVID-19,” the statement reads.
The group points to two studies published in the last week showing that masks in school settings work. The studies were done in Maricopa and Pima counties in Arizona in July and August of this year, and found that schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have COVID-19 outbreaks.
Schools in Madison and Rankin counties, along with Ocean Springs School District, have recently rolled back their mask requirements. The Rankin County School District school board voted unanimously to rescind the district’s mask mandate last week.
In a Sept. 23 letter to families, Madison County School District Superintendent Charlotte Seals cited a “significant decline in Covid-19 cases and quarantine” in the district.
“The data now supports a change in our Covid-19 protocol level,” the letter continued, referring to a tiered COVID-19 response system the district developed. “As of Friday, September 24, Madison County will transition to Covid-19 Protocol Level 1, which includes recommended but not required mask wearing in school buildings.”
When asked whether the district will reconsider based on the pediatricians’ plea, Gene Wright, director of communications, deferred to the school board, which will meet Monday.
Ocean Springs School District Communications Specialist Trey Brennan said the district is monitoring data and will “make decisions based on local conditions in our community.”
A spokesperson for the Rankin County School District did not respond to Mississippi Today’s questions on Friday morning.
Mississippi’s job training and partnerships with private companies aren’t consistent or extensive enough to grow a bigger and better-skilled workforce, according to Accelerate Mississippi’s first-ever public report.
The 6-month-old office and its director, Ryan Miller, are tasked with setting the state’s disjointed workforce development efforts on a strategic path — one that ends in more Mississippians at jobs that pay $40,000 or more a year.
Miller says that means “looking in the mirror” and assessing how past job training funds were spent. With new legislative guidelines for spending job training funds and Miller at the helm, the state is at the beginning stages of redirecting millions of taxpayer dollars to target skills training for the state’s most in-demand jobs.
“One of the things that frustrates me the most… is when I hear the old saying ‘Why are we doing this?’ and the answer comes back ‘because that’s the way things have always been done,’” Gov. Tate Reeves said during his first joint press conference with the new office earlier this week.
“When it comes to workforce development, I refuse to allow our state to adopt this mentality.”
Accelerate Mississippi’s 2021 “Talent Development Assessment” was published Wednesday. The new office is required to write an annual report under the legislation that created the office and new training dollar guidelines.
“It’s a transition,” Miller told Mississippi Today. “We’re on a path to improve.”
Miller’s office may be new, but the Legislature has put it in charge of a $25 million job training fund, which contains money from the state’s Workforce Enhancement Training.or “WET” fund, and Mississippi Works fund. The pot of money is collected via an unemployment insurance tax on businesses.
In 2020-21, nearly $1 million from the WET fund covered safety training at private companies, according to a Community College Board breakdown. It’s unlikely any federally required safety classes or CPR training will continue to qualify under the new guidelines, Miller said.
Nearly $3 million funded “basic skill” classes across the state’s community college classes during the same period of time. It’s one of the largest uses of any of the WET funds.
Miller said if those classes don’t show paths to career advancement or opportunities for better wages, that WET funds will likely no longer cover them.
“We have to prioritize with the limited funding for which we have responsibility,” Miller said. “We make those decisions on priority based upon data, and the input from our industry sector.”
The Accelerate Mississippi report specifies that state money has funded programs that were “important to individual communities” that no longer fit under the new office’s state-mandated guidelines to target fields with the largest gaps in skilled workers.
The report highlights linemen to metal workers and nurses as some of the most in-demand, and above-average-paying jobs with the largest gap between the number of graduated skilled workers and open positions.
It also says the state needs to collaborate to improve its funded job training efforts; that there have been “micro” successes but few on a “macro” level. The state’s successes often happened in silos, without the collaboration needed to “improver offerings and optimize the use of workforce training funds.”
To do that, Reeves and Miller announced it will be breaking the state up into eight regions or “ecosystems.” Each area will have an Accelerate Mississippi representative to understand the niche job skill needs of that community.
The state already has four local workforce development areas that are manned by offices called the Planning and Development Districts. Each of those designated areas will have two of the “ecosystems” within them.
Miller said the new Accelerate Mississippi positions won’t duplicate the existing efforts, but complement them.
Don’t look now, but a wave of highly talented, really young Mississippi golfers is about to make a splash on the PGA Tour that will be unprecedented in the state’s golf history.
Rick Cleveland
You don’t have to take it from me. Listen to 2019 U.S. Amateur champion Andy Ogletree, from tiny Little Rock in Newton County, who shot a first round 67 Thursday in the Sanderson Farms Championship at Country Club of Jackson.
“Yeah, it’s really cool to see all the young guys from Mississippi out here,” Ogletree, 23, said. “I’m not surprised. We all started young and we’ve been playing together for years all through the junior ranks. Got recruited together. There’s a lot of talent right here in Mississippi, a lot of us about the same age.”
Hayden Buckley of Belden also shot 67, Ogletree played with Fulton native and former Mississippi State golfer Chad Ramey, who shot 70. Davis Riley, another PGA Tour rookie from Hattiesburg, shot 71. West Point’s Cohen Trolio, the current Mississippi Amateur champion and just a freshman at LSU, also shot 71.
Before the tournament even began Jackson’s Wilson Furr shot 67 in the Sanderson Monday qualifying at Deerfield, but lost a five-hole sudden death playoff for the final spot in the Sanderson Farms field. You haven’t heard the last from the talented Furr – or from former NCAA champion Braden Thornberry, who also failed to survive the Monday qualifying but will play again on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2022. Jonathan Randolph, now of Oxford, still plays the Korn Ferry Tour, as well.
“Never before,” long-time Mississippi golf pro Randy Watkins answered, when asked when the state had produced so many tour-quality golfers at the same time. “It’s amazing, and you can add Ally Ewing to it if you want to include female golfers. She’s won twice on the LPGA Tour, one of the best ones out there, another golfer from Fulton.”
Why now? Why are so many potentially great players coming along at the same time? Golf has existed in Mississippi since the early 1900s. We’ve never had more than one or two golfers playing the PGA Tour at the same time.
“If you had to put a finger on it, I think there’s a couple reasons,” said Watkins, a former U.S. junior golf champion and tour player. “We’ve had so many great golf courses built in Mississippi over the last 20-25 years. I mean, world class courses. And the instruction is so much better for young golfers these days, guys like VJ Trolio and Tim Yelverton at Old Waverly, and I give a lot of credit to Jim Gallagher, who has taken an interest and played with a lot of these young guys coming up.”
The 2019 U.S. Amateur, played at fabled Pinehurst in North Carolina, was probably the best advertisement ever for Mississippi golf talent. More than 7,000 golfers from all 50 states and around the world entered the qualifying process. When the tournament reached the semifinal stage, two of the four remaining were from Mississippi, Ogletree and Cohen Trolio, then just 17. Ogletree defeated Trolio in the semis and went on to win the championship the next day, the first Mississippian to ever claim that crown.
Ogletree was just getting started. He was the low amateur in the 2020 Masters, finishing in a tie for 32nd. He turned pro after that, but his career has been on essentially a six-month hiatus since he underwent surgery on his left hip in April.
“It just feels good to be playing golf again,” Ogletree said after finishing his 67 Thursday. “Regardless of score, I’m playing pain free and that’s the most important thing for me right now.”
Asked if the bad hip had make it difficult to make a natural turn in his golf swing, Ogletree chuckled and then answered, “It made it hard to even walk.”
But Ogletree had a spring his step Thursday coming off the ninth green (his 18th) where he sank a seven-foot birdie putt to complete a round that included five birdies and an eagle. After all, this was a tournament he had in mind during those weeks and months of rehab from the surgery.
“Yeah, this is kind of the one we had circled hoping that I would get a sponsor invite into this one and kind of all of my rehab and preparation was that I would get a start here,” Ogletree said. “So it’s kind of all worked out kind of the way we wanted to and really happy to be playing in Mississippi, a lot of familiar faces out here this week, a lot of friends and family out watching, so it’s a good time and I’m glad everyone gets to see me play.”
Is there added pressure playing in front of so many home folk?
“No, I like playing in front of a crowd,” Ogletree answered. “The first nine PGA events I played before my surgery there was no crowd because of COVID. It’s nice to have a few people clapping now and then.”
The gallery had plenty to cheer from Ogletree and other Mississippians Thursday. When you consider all the talent, mixed with so much youth, this really could go on for years.
The investigation, reported for Mississippi Today in partnership with the The Marshall Project, exposed Mississippi’s practice of forcing individuals convicted of low-level felony offenses to work off their fines and other court debts at low-wage jobs during the day while they are confined in locked facilities at night until the debts are paid.
“I’m grateful to know that readers were as stirred as I was by the experiences of Annita, Dixie, Gaylia and so many others in Mississippi’s disastrous prison system,” Ann Wolfe, Mississippi Today’s investigative reporter, said. “Thank you to the dozens of people who trusted us to tell their stories. None of this, none of the impact we hope to have through our reporting, is possible without their courage and vulnerability.”
The project was a five-part series reported over several months, reported by Joseph Neff and Alysia Santo of The Marshall Project, and Michelle Liu and Anna Wolfe of Mississippi Today. Data analysis was provided by The Marshall Project’s Andrew R. Calderon. Leslie Eaton of The Marshall Project and R.L. Nave of Mississippi Today (now at editor-in-chief at Reckon) edited the project. Liu, who was a reporter for Mississippi Today between 2018 and 2020, now works for The Associated Press.
“This reporting — among the most impactful government accountability journalism in Mississippi’s history — should be held up as a shining example of the power of newsroom collaboration,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “Pairing Mississippi Today’s local, boots-on-the-ground reporting with the resources and renowned talent of the journalists at The Marshall Project allowed us to expose profound wrongs and change many lives for the better. We’re so proud to have been part of this project.”
This is the fifth national award the investigation has won. In April 2021, the investigation won the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. In March 2020, the project won the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim awards for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting. In February 2020, the reporting won the Sidney Award. In September 2020, it won the Online News Association’s Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award.
Tens of thousands of Mississippians who are at the highest risk for COVID-19 are now eligible for a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine to help increase their protection against the virus.
There are three groups of people now eligible to receive a third dose at least six months after receiving their second dose.
People aged 65 years and older and residents in long-term care settings
People aged 18-64 years with certain underlying medical conditions
People aged 18-64 years who are at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure and transmission because of occupational or institutional settings
In Mississippi, booster shots are now available at all county health departments. Appointments can be made online at https://covidvaccine.umc.edu or by calling the Mississippi Department of Health COVID-19 hotline at 877-978-6453.
Boosters for these groups were recommended by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee on Sept. 24.
Regulators have not yet made additional recommendations about booster shots for those who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Moderna has applied for Food and Drug Administration authorization of booster shots, and the FDA is leaning towards authorizing half-dose booster shots, according to a report from Bloomberg. Johnson & Johnson has not submitted an application for boosters of its single-dose vaccine to the FDA, but has reported studies that show a second dose significantly increases the vaccine’s efficacy.
In August, FDA made a small number of people with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients and organ transplant recipients, who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines eligible for a third shot. These shots must be received at least four weeks after a second dose, and are not boosters, but instead a necessary component of immunization for these individuals.
