Thirteen years ago, at the direction of One Voice, a small group of community leaders and elected officials gathered with the MS NAACP in a roundtable discussion on leadership. This discussion evolved into a monthly meeting aimed at cultivating strategic alliances. As a result of these discussions, the first Mississippi Black Leadership Summit was held in 2008, convening members of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus, the Mississippi Association of Black Mayors, the Minority Caucus of Supervisors, MBC-LEO, the Black Sheriff’s Association, Partners in Education, Tax Assessors / Tax Collectors, Chancery and Circuit Clerks.
One Voice’s award-winning Mississippi Black Leadership Summit is coming to a community near you next month. Annually, this event convenes community leaders and elected officials for leadership development, hoping that this investment in these leaders will help build more sustainable communities and a Mississippi we all deserve. One Voice is excited to announce #MBLS2021 will uplift leaders in communities all over the state as we will be virtually traveling to every region in Mississippi for the summit.
Through the American Rescue Plan, Mississippi will receive the most significant direct federal funding in history to rebuild local economies over the next few years. As community advocates, One Voice and its partners should lead the charge, following the money and ensuring all communities can thrive. We must provide resources across the state that are not invested or funneled into systems that promote inequity. With this in mind, One Voice is using #MBLS2021 to examine what community investments should be prioritized in our state.
MBLS Workshop Titles, Locations, and Dates
From Crisis to Opportunity: Exploring Education Investments in the Mississippi Delta Delta – Wednesday, October 20, 2021, 5:30 pm
Who Pays, Mississippi? An overview of income, race, and economic development in Mississippi North – Thursday, October 21 at l1am
Making the Connection from Electricity to Broadband Southwest – Friday, October 22 at 11 am
Lifting Our Voices: Protecting our Voting Rights & Pushing for Fair Representation Gulf Coast – Tuesday,October 26 at 11 am
Criminal Justice in Mississippi; where we are and where we need to be East – Wednesday, October 27 at 11 am
Community Conversation: What’s On Your Mind? Central – Thursday, October 28 at 6 pm
MBLS is free to the public, but registration is required. Participants can register at onevoicems.org.
One Voice is a nonprofit organization specializing in training, leadership development, and network building in underserved communities. Our mission is to ensure an equal voice to traditionally silenced communities.
Legislators will be redrawing Mississippi’s four U.S. House seats and 174 state legislative seats as the state is undergoing some significant changes to its population.
The percentage of the state’s white population is shrinking faster than that of other demographic groups. The state’s white and African American population both decreased during the past 10 years, but the overall non-white population grew.
Additionally, Mississippians are moving from rural to urban and suburban areas of the state.
The state had a Black population of 1,084,481 as of the 2020 Census compared to 1,098,385 10 years earlier — a decline of 13,940 people. During the same time, Mississippi’s white population decreased at a much faster rate, shrinking 95,791 people the past 10 years to 1,658,893. Other minority groups experienced slight upticks during the past 10 years, though still making up a much smaller percentage of the state’s overall population when compared to the white and African American population.
The percentage of Mississippians identifying as other than solely white or African American was 3.85% in 2010 and now stands at 7.36%, according to Census data. Scott County in east central Mississippi is now about 15% Hispanic.
A growing non-white population in the midst of overall population loss is one of the puzzles members of the Legislature will have to figure out next year as they redraw the U.S. congressional and state legislative seats.
To further complicate that puzzle, the 2020 Census reveals that the areas of the state that have traditionally been majority African American — primarily counties touching or close to the Mississippi River — lost significant population the past 10 years. According to information compiled by Chism Strategies, a Mississippi-based polling and political consulting firm, the population of the Delta, which comprises a considerable amount of the river counties, declined 38,000 or 12% during the past 10 years.
Currently, there are 14 African American-majority districts in the state Senate and 42 in the House. Under federal law, it is difficult, though not impossible, for states to reduce the number of Black majority districts through a process called retrogression. So the Legislature will face the challenge of finding new Black majority districts to perhaps replace population loss in traditional Black population centers that are losing residents, such as the Mississippi Delta.
A joint legislative committee recently concluded a series of nine hearing across the state to garner public input on redistricting as they begin the task of redrawing the districts to match population shifts found during the 2020 shifts. The Legislature is expected to take up redistricting during the 2022 session, which begins in January.
Both the U.S. Constitution and state law mandate the redrawing of districts every 10 years after the Census is completed.
Time and again during the series of hearings, legislators were urged to ensure Black representation grows in the state. But how to achieve that African American representation has evolved over the years.
Rep. Ed Blackmon, who has been a member of the state House since 1980 and played a major role in increasing the number of Black majority districts in the state, has said in past interviews that at one time there was a belief that super majority minority districts (Black populations of 75% or more) had to be drawn for Black candidates to win. Blackmon said that is no longer the case. He and others now oppose what they say are the efforts of Republican majorities “to pack” Black residents in a limited number of districts.
Now, Blackmon and others argue, Black residents should not be “packed” into super majority minority districts but instead spread into more districts to increase their influence.
“Stacking and packing and gerrymandering voting districts to make safe districts for any party should be avoided,” said Lynn Evans, a board member of Mississippi Common Cause, which promotes for various issues dealing with governmental transparency. She said “classic safe districts” have a tendency to elect candidates who often do not serve the best interest of the state as a whole.
Rep. Hester Jackson McCray, D-Southaven, whose narrow win in House District 40 in 2019 made her the first African American to represent DeSoto County in the Legislature, said, “DeSoto County has the 3rd largest minority population in our state, but I feel that our minority population communities have been successfully broken apart and gerrymandered so that our vote has been diluted, and it has been impossible for a person of color to win a seat at the legislative table where decisions are made until my House 40 victory in 2019.”
Evans said the Black population in DeSoto County has grown by nearly 20,000 residents since 2010.
To highlight the evolution of DeSoto County, one of the fastest growing counties in the state, look no further than Jackson McCray’s District 40. In 2010, District 40 had a Black population of 34%. Now its African American population is just under 50% and when "other" groups are factored in, the district's minority population is now a majority, according to the 2020 Census data. She said during one of the public hearings of the Joint Legislative Redistricting Committee that perhaps two African American majority House district and a Senate district could be drawn in the fast growing Memphis suburb.
Overall, six counties had growth of 10% or more while 12 more had growth of less than 10%. Those growing counties were mostly in urban or suburban areas. The other 64 counties, mostly rural, lost population. The most glaring exception to the trend of migration from rural to urban/suburban areas was Hinds, the state’s most populous county, which includes Jackson, the state’s most populous city. Hinds’ population declined 17,000, or 7%, according to Chism.
According to analysis done by Chism, only nine of the 42 majority Black districts had a population that was within 5% of the legally allowed ideal population. The rest were below that number.
The trick for the Legislature will be to draw districts to provide representation for the state’s African American population in light of the fact that traditional centers of Black population in the state are losing residents in significant numbers.
The state’s Black population in 2010 was 37.02%, with a black voting-age population of 34.7%, based on Census data. African Americans comprise 36.62% of the population in 2020, with a black voting-age population of 35.25%.
But during the same time period the decline in the white community was much more precipitous, dropping from 59.13% in 2010 to 56.02% in 2020.
These numbers reflect those who identify in only one demographic area. To further illustrate the growth in the state’s minority population, the percentage of people who identify in more than one demographic area also is growing.
Overall, Mississippi’s population declined slightly during the past 10 years — just over 6,000 people to 2,961,279. Most states in the Southeastern region had significant population gains.
A Hinds County judge has finally accepted a plea deal from a nonprofit accountant at the center of a multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme.
Ann McGrew, head financial officer for Mississippi Community Education Center and a potential star witness against the nonprofit’s owner, has pleaded guilty to both original charges against her.
McGrew first agreed to a deal with prosecutors more than eight months ago for her role in the “sprawling” scheme uncovered in February of 2020. But in a very rare occurrence, Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Adrienne Wooten rejected her guilty plea.
Details of that initial agreement were not public, but while another defendant in the scheme got his charges cut, McGrew is now saddled with both conspiracy to commit embezzlement and making fraudulent statements.
In exchange for her cooperation and testimony against co-defendants, the state will recommend remanding the count of making fraudulent statements at sentencing. McGrew faces up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines on the first charge. Or, if Wooten does not take the state’s recommendation, she could face up to 10 years and $15,000 in fines. Wooten won’t sentence McGrew until after the other cases conclude.
In February of 2020, a Hinds County grand jury indicted McGrew, Nancy New, the owner of Mississippi Community Education Center, her son Zach New, John Davis, former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, agency employee Gregory “Latimer” Smith and retired WWE wrestler Brett DiBiase within an alleged scheme to embezzle a total of $4.15 million from a federal program intended to help the poor.
As the accountant, McGrew would have some of the most direct knowledge about who directed funds to which sources, so she’s an important witness for the state’s case.
Under McGrew’s financial watch, at least $2 million federal dollars flowed from Mississippi Community Education Center to Nancy New’s for-profit education company New Learning Resources Inc., where McGrew was also bookkeeper. McGrew falsified documents, invoices and ledgers to hide Nancy and Zach New’s theft, according to the indictment against her.
Nowhere have auditors or prosecutors shown how McGrew may have personally benefited from the scheme she aided.
McGrew’s attorney Joe Holloman and Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens could not share further details with Mississippi Today because of a gag order Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Faye Peterson entered last November in the case.
McGrew is the second person to plead guilty within the scheme, more than a year and a half after the arrests.
Brett DiBiase pleaded guilty to making fraudulent statements last December but not to an original conspiracy charge.
Investigators caught DiBiase for accepting a $48,000 contract from the agency for work he was unable to perform because he was staying in a luxury rehab facility in Malibu, California, at the time. A judge won’t sentence him until after the other cases conclude. His crime carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Though McGrew is now cooperating with state prosecutors, she and her colleagues at the nonprofit did not comply with requests from accountants during a recent independent forensic audit of the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
As a result, the audit, for which the state paid $2.1 million, could not parse out what happened to over $40 million of the nonprofit’s spending.
The report did not analyze payments from New’s nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, to:
Most of the money in question came from a block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a few-strings-attached federal fund which states can use to provide cash assistance, formerly known as the welfare check, to very low-income families or on a number of other programs.
The Mississippi Department of Human Services had offered small contracts to New’s nonprofit and another nonprofit called Family Resource Center of North Mississippi over the years. But in 2017, the agency began funneling tens of millions to the two organizations under the guise of a family-stabilizing initiative called Families First for Mississippi.
The two organizations then subgranted with dozens of other people and organizations but kept very poor track of the spending or what the recipients were supposed to be accomplishing. But only officials from New’s nonprofit have been accused of a crime.
In the summer of 2019, once the auditor’s office caught wind of the scheme, McGrew emailed a ledger to the welfare agency outlining how “Families First” had spent about $14 million, Clarion Ledger reported.
A former agency spokesperson told Mississippi Today that the agency had never received a similar detailed accounting of Families First before that.
The spreadsheet the agency did get at that time, which showed egregious spending such as expensive travel, dinners, advertising and lobbying, wasn’t even accurate or reliable, auditors found. The nonprofit often failed to properly delineate the sources of its funds. The way McGrew pooled money in their records made it difficult to identify who actually received TANF dollars.
The criminal charges against the six defendants address just a sliver of the overall misspending that occurred at the welfare agency under the leadership of Davis, and his boss, Gov. Phil Bryant.
The $2 million in theft that McGrew covered up represents less than 3% of the $76 million in misspending identified by the most recent independent audit.
The amount Brett DiBiase fraudulently obtained represents an even smaller fraction.
Charges against Brett DiBiase didn’t address the salary he was making at Mississippi Community Education Center or the $160,000 the nonprofit paid for his rehab stay.
Prosecutors haven’t brought any charges against his father, Ted DiBiase, whose organization received $2 million in welfare dollars from the agency or his brother, Ted DiBiase Jr., who may have profited more than any other individual from the welfare misspending after receiving more than $3 million from the nonprofit. The latest audit said all payments to the DiBiase family were indicative of fraud, waste or abuse.
Fixing the state’s broken ballot initiative process will likely not be part of any special session to be called by Gov. Tate Reeves in the coming days.
Chairs of both the House and Senate Constitution committees said they would prefer to take up the issue of reinstating the initiative process in January when the new session begins. Reeves is expected to call a special session to allow the Legislature to address legalizing medical marijuana.
In November 2020, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative legalizing medical marijuana. But in May 2021, the state Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional both the medical marijuana vote and the state’s entire initiative process.
Ballot initiatives, added to the state Constitution in the early 1990s, are voter-led efforts to put issues directly on a statewide ballot rather than wait for lawmakers or other state leaders to adopt policy themselves. The initiative process, which requires gathering tens of thousands of signatures and voter approval before a policy can be enacted, is widely viewed a cornerstone of democratic government.
After the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, voters of many political backgrounds erupted in anger. Mississippians broadly called for a special session for the Legislature to both enact a medical marijuana law and reinstate the initiative process.
House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, was vocal in advocating for the governor to call a special session to fix the initiative process that was ruled unconstitutional in the controversial decision by the state Supreme Court.
But while legislators have worked to reach a consensus on a medical marijuana proposal in advance of the governor calling a special session, efforts to fix the initiative in special session have lost steam.
When Gunn recently spoke of items he would like to see on a special session agenda, he listed medical marijuana and some COVID-19-related items but said nothing about adding an initiative fix.
“Originally the speaker was open to knocking that out with medical marijuana,” said House Constitution Committee Chair Fred Shanks, R-Brandon. “We were ready to go on the House side. But there has not been much talk of it lately. But we will take care of it ( the initiative process) during the regular session.”
Shanks’ counterpart in the Senate, Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg, offered similar comments.
“We spent a lot of time working on the marijuana bill, but I think we need to put time into working on the ballot initiative process before we take it up,” said Johnson, the Senate Constitution Committee chairman. “There’s no benefit to doing it before session as it has to go on the ballot in November 2022.”
Any fix to the initiative process adopted by the Legislature would have to gain the approval of the voters. But there is no provision mandating that the voter approval would have to occur during a November general election. Legislators could schedule a special election for any date, though the election cost would be much lower if the vote on the initiative fix was part of an already scheduled election. Secretary of State Michael Watson has estimated that costs of a special election of between $1 million and $1.5 million.
The initiative process was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because of language saying in order to place a proposal on the ballot a specific number of signatures had to be gathered from five congressional districts. The state lost a congressional seat in 2000 and now only has four, rendering both the medical marijuana initiative that relied on the five-district language and the entire initiative process invalid, the Supreme Court ruled.
Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, said he would prefer not to wait until the regular session to deal with the initiative fix.
“I would prefer to see it in the special session along with some other things,” he said. “We keep hearing they are limiting it to medical marijuana. I don’t think that is a good idea, but I am not part of leadership.”
Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader, said multiple items should be considered, such as COVID-19 “hazard pay” not only for health care workers but grocery store clerks and others who “had to come to work every day” to ensure a functioning society.
Johnson also said the initiative process should be reinstated as soon as possible to allow people to gather signatures to bypass the Legislature to place issues on the ballot, such as expanding health care to provide coverage for the working poor with the federal government paying most of the costs. Various high profile groups such as the Mississippi Hospital Association had started work on a Medicaid expansion initiative when the Supreme Court invalidated the initiative process.
“We should do medical marijuana, but I don’t understand why we are not talking about other serious issues,” Johnson said.
Mississippi laid out an argument before the U.S. Supreme Court last week that could impact water law principles around the globe.
The state is seeking over $600 million in damages from neighboring Tennessee over what it sees as stolen groundwater. Since 1985, Mississippi claims, a Memphis public utility has pumped enough water from an interstate aquifer to force water from Mississippi’s side of the border into Tennessee.
The nation’s highest court has ruled on a number of disputes dealing with surface water in the past, such as two states fighting over use of the same river, but this is the first case to focus entirely on groundwater.
Law and water resource experts explained to Mississippi Today why the Supreme Court’s ruling could have wide-reaching effects.
First, the supply of groundwater in the world dwarfs that of surface water, which is already becoming less reliable due to climate change; about three-quarters of Mississippi’s water comes from groundwater.
Second, very few places around the world that share aquifers have any agreement over how to divide the resource.
“People, communities, countries are going to have to go to groundwater to meet their water needs, and they’ll eventually be pumping from the same aquifers on different sides of the border,” said Gabriel Eckstein, a professor and director of the Energy, Environmental, and Natural Resource Systems Law Program at Texas A&M University.
This case, he explained, will help inform places across the world on how to share groundwater.
“Well do I sue my neighbor, do I enter into a treaty with them, or do I ignore them?” Eckstein said.
For the most part, bordering states and countries have chosen the latter option. With this case, Mississippi is hoping to set a new precedent by staking ownership in the water under its land.
Physically, the evidence backs Mississippi’s claim, explained Robert Mace, a professor at Texas State University with a Ph.D. in hydrogeology.
“Tennessee’s pumping creates what we call a cone of depression, and that cone of depression reaches out across the state line,” Mace said. “The data clearly shows that the human intervention of (Tennessee’s) well field has impacted the groundwater flow in the aquifer and is pulling water from Mississippi into Tennessee.”
Conceptually, however, it’s unclear what the legal grounds are for Mississippi’s claims, as the justices expressed during last week’s oral arguments.
In past interstate water disputes, the Supreme Court has leaned on “equitable apportionment,” a set of principles that determine a fair allotment of water based on factors such as how many people need the water, what it’s needed for, conservation, climate, among others.
Tennessee, the special master — an outside expert the court appoints for highly technical cases — and the assistant to the solicitor general all argued that equitable apportionment should apply to this case as well.
But Mississippi chose to forgo that route for the time being, instead claiming ownership over the water that has flowed underneath Tennessee, an argument that the justices and other legal experts struggle with.
The justices, expressing confusion, made several analogies during the oral arguments to wrap their heads around the issue: If a pack of wild horses ran from one state to another, which state owns the horses? If a plane in the sky forced fog across a state boundary, could one state claim damages from the loss of its fog?
“The bottom line is that water flows,” said Buzz Thompson, a professor at Stanford University who served as Special Master for Montana v. Wyoming, a Supreme Court interstate water case from 2018. “It’s hard to say that you have a right to keep a molecule of water that’s underneath your state from flowing over under another state, unless you tell that state that they can’t pump.
“It’s hard to find very many legal experts outside of Mississippi that would say this is a reasonable and responsible way of resolving these types of disputes.”
Several states, led by Colorado, the International Law Committee in New York City, and various law professors from around the country all filed briefs against Mississippi, citing equitable apportionment as a reasonable solution.
A ruling in Mississippi’s favor would make it difficult to equitably divide groundwater in the future, Eckstein said.
“States will say, ‘This is how much we have, this is how much you have, I’m sorry you have just a small section of the aquifer, too bad. If you want, we’ll sell you some,’” he said. “It’s not an equity issue anymore, it becomes an ownership and market issue.”
As state leaders grapple with workforce issues, young people fleeing the state, and ways for Mississippi to compete in the modern economy, they should remember the colloquial definition of insanity: continuing to do the same things while expecting different results.
One of those is the continuing, long-running failure of state lawmakers to address Mississippi’s high gender pay gap. Mississippi is now the only state in the nation without an equal pay law, after Alabama passed one in 2019. Quick tip: History shows that any time Mississippi is the only state doing something, or the last state to do something, that policy bears close scrutiny.
Recent studies show women make up 51.5% of the population in Mississippi and nearly half of its workforce. They are the primary breadwinners for a majority — 53.5% — of families in this state, which is the highest rate in the nation.
But women working full time in Mississippi earn 27% less than men, far greater than the 19% gap nationwide. That gap grows worse for Black and Latina women in Mississippi, who are paid just 54 cents for every dollar paid to white men.
Women make up nearly 60% of those in Mississippi’s workforce living below the poverty line. The state has continually ranked worst or near-worst in most every ranking for working women.
Lawmakers on the Senate Labor Committee heard these and other similar statistics and issues last week. Labor Chairman Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, is vowing to push again for equal pay legislation next year. The move is backed by the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, Attorney General Lynn Fitch (the only female statewide elected leader in state government) and a bipartisan group of lawmakers that has been growing in recent years.
But it will likely again be (quietly) opposed by business interests and ultimately decided by a Legislature that is only about 16% female, and remains much whiter and more male than the state of Mississippi at large.
Over decades, legislative efforts to pass an equal pay law have been quietly snuffed out in committee, typically without a vote and typically without much public discussion by opponents.
But it would appear the efforts to pass an equal pay law have grown stronger in recent years.
In 2017, there was a bipartisan effort with then-Treasurer Fitch; Republican lawmakers including Reps. Becky Currie, Carolyn Crawford and then-Sen. Sally Doty; and Democrats, including then-House Minority Leader David Baria, Reps. Sonya Williams-Barnes, Alyce Clarke, Bryant Clark and then-Sen. Tammy Witherspoon. It failed, but garnered more attention and public debate than the issue had in recent years.
In 2018, with a strong bipartisan vote of 106-10, the House passed on to the Senate a bill (to prevent local governments from establishing minimum wages) that was amended to include an equal pay provision. Many Republicans who initially voted no changed their votes to yes for posterity — and likely because they would have to face their mothers, wives and daughters. But the Senate, led by then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, let the measure die in committee without a vote.
When pressed, opponents’ stated rationale has been that there are already federal equal pay laws, and that they don’t want to put undue regulations on businesses or cause a bunch of unwarranted lawsuits.
But the numbers for working women in Mississippi would indicate that A: The federal laws are not working, and B: Many wage lawsuits would be warranted here.
And then there’s C: Mississippi is not succeeding in matters of jobs and wage growth, economic development, population growth (it’s declining), reducing poverty … you name it.
Maybe 2022 will be the year Mississippi’s lawmakers join the rest of the country in opposing unequal pay for women, and realize that failing to do so is the definition of insanity.
Mississippi Today journalists Adam Ganucheau and Geoff Pender discuss how Mississippi is behind many other states in determining how to spend billions in federal coronavirus-related stimulus funds.
Adam Ganucheau: Welcome to The Other Side, Mississippi Today’s political podcast. I’m your host, Adam Ganucheau. The Other Side let you hear directly from the most connected players and observers across the spectrum of politics in Mississippi. As you can probably tell, I am on the phone, on the road today, but wanted to have a good conversation today with my colleague Geoff Pender. Geoff, thanks for being here today.
You know, we were talking about, you know, what the big of this last week was, and you’ve done a lot of writing, not just in the past few days, but really the past few weeks about the unprecedented amount of federal funding the state is going to receive or has received through the federal stimulus packages that Congress have approved. Geoff, I guess, to kick us off sort of how much money we’re actually talking about here. And then I want to talk to you about where the hell state leaders actually are on spending this money or planning to spend this money.
Geoff Pender: Sure, sure. Well, mostly what we’ve been focused on recently is the American Rescue Plan Act. Depending on how you tally it, the state’s going to receive an excess of $6 billion, but a lot of what’s been keyed on is the Legislature’s going to receive about $1.8 billion. Local governments are going to receive directly a total approaching a billion, over 900 million. And then some other agencies are going to get direct money. For instance, human services is going to get an excess of $500 million directly for one example. And as far as where we are, where the state is and spending that money, well, we haven’t really started planning even for this. One thing we pointed out in recent weeks is that Mississippi appears to be pretty far behind most other states. I think the last check I did on it there were at least 32 states that had basically begun spending ARPA funds and then others coming out with plans. I think Alabama within just recent days has announced they’re going to spend a big chunk to try and resolve their prison crisis, but no. Mississippi leaders as far as the ARPA funds, Legislature and the governor appear to be kind of sitting back and waiting to figure out how to spend the money.
Adam Ganucheau: That’s really interesting. You know, what is the timeline, the timeframe in which they have to spend this money? I know that when the CARES Act, way back last year— it seems like a lifetime ago— was passed by Congress, there was a pretty tight deadline on states to spend that first big pot of federal money.
We’re not talking about that pot of money obviously anymore. To your point, we’re talking about the American Rescue Act or American Rescue Plan rather. What is the timeframe in which state leaders have to spend this money?
Geoff Pender: For the bulk of the money, it’s got a deadline of December 31, 2024, for allocating it.
And a December 31,2026, deadline for actually spending it. That sounds like a long way off. That sounds like a long time, but one thing that should be noted in this even with those deadlines, I mean, it takes some doing. It takes some planning. It takes setting up some infrastructure so to speak to spend billions of dollars, especially billions of federal dollars. If you’re going to do it A, in the best way that’s going to help the state in the best way with some forethought and planning and B, if you’re going to do it properly where the feds don’t show up a year or two later and say, “You misspent this. Pay it back.”
Those are two key issues. And again, you know, a lot of people may not realize, like I said, just the mechanics of spending this amount of money. You know, that’s a big task. We don’t have thousands of extra accountants across all these agencies who can, you know, drop everything else they’re doing and figure this out.
So, you know, it would appear to be, you know, kind of key that the state leaders kind of get on the ball and start trying to get together on how best to spend this money.
Adam Ganucheau: Sure. I think setting it up this way, framing it, thinking about it this way is important. This has never happened before.
I mean, Mississippi, which is the poorest state in the nation by many different rationales and data sets has a lot of problems. We’ve had a lot of problems over the years, you know, funding basic government services. We’ve had more problems, you know, sort of launching new initiatives that are desperately needed, that many other states are doing.
And this is just a critical time. And I think everyone knows that and agrees with that. But, you know, seeing the general lack of action or planning or proposals on this in Mississippi is really just telling, Geoff, especially as you’ve reported it. And I think you mentioned sort of a second ago, relative to other states, Mississippi really does seem to be behind the ball in dealing with and handling this sort of golden once in a lifetime opportunity.
Geoff Pender: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one thing I try to keep in mind, I mean, this is labeled more or less as stimulus. We’re in uncertain economic times. Don’t know what the next, you know, six months, even is going to provide for.
So stimulus money typically I guess there’s also sometimes a desire to get it out there and get to stimulating. Anyway, one thing you mentioned a second ago, too, it’s not like Mississippi doesn’t have a lot of issues or problems or areas that this money could help. We have tons of them.
And again, that, you know, might make the task more difficult and time consuming figuring out how to prioritize things. And another thing on this, the longer time drags on, I mean, certainly I’m sure the Legislature could get together and spend some of this very quickly. Is that a good thing? The more time drags on, does this mean citizens and communities and community groups are they going to have any input on how this is spent? You know, probably the longer things drag on, the less inputs you would see from you know, rank and file Mississippians on how this gets spent. Other states have actually done things along those lines, created task force, brought in, you know, community groups and leaders and everything else.
So you know, again the longer this drags on, the more troublesome that might be.
Adam Ganucheau: Huge chunks of this money, you know, as you said, I mean, it’s a stimulus. It’s because we are experiencing a time of economic hardship and, you know, what that looks like for real Mississippians is often unfathomable. And we have done plenty of reporting of some of those stories over the last few months during the pandemic. You know, you think about that and you contrast it with knowing that Mississippi state government has long struggled, long struggled with getting money into the people’s hands who need it most.
You know, our charge as journalists, I think our charge is Mississippi and it’s not even just journalists should very much be in the coming weeks and months watching closely how our government leaders from the state level on down to the local level are going to be spending this money and whether or not that money will be reaching the right people. You know, Geoff, I know that last week on this podcast, you and our colleague Anna Wolfe interviewed some people about one program in particular, a childcare program for working people in Mississippi and now that program during the pandemic, especially, has ultimately failed and how there’s all this federal money that could fix it.
You know, that’s such a huge example, big example of what we’re talking about here, how people are struggling because of what has happened over the last 18 is coming up on 20, 22 months since the pandemic started. Times are tough, and it’s going to be interesting to follow this money.
Geoff Pender: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. That money you mentioned is part of another pot or staunch of this money, over $500 million that’s coming directly to DHS that earmarked for essentially workforce childcare, which is a huge need here. And again, we appear to be behind many, if not most, other states in that really, at least publicly, no one’s announced any kind of plan, the governor DHS on exactly how that could be spent, and you know, one would think that kind of money could really help a program like that. It’s sorely needed.
Adam Ganucheau: Sure. Sure. Well, Geoff, as always, I appreciate sort of your work and all of these regards, but in following this money and, you know, holding state leaders, local leaders holding their feet to the fire and as they determine how to spend this money, we’ll see what happens.
You know, we’d love to see some action on this sooner rather than later, but so far it’s been largely crickets.
Geoff Pender: We should note, as far as state leaders go, one at least, Delbert Hosemann has actually pitched kind of at least a general plan for potentially a large amount of this money. He proposes taking the Legislature’s $1.8 billion and setting up some kind of matching program for the cities and counties to come up with a project, take whatever money they’re getting from this, come up with a project and apply to the state for matching money. His thought on that is cities and counties could do bigger, more transformative projects that way. And he’s gone across the state and met with local leaders. I think they were fairly open to the idea.
But beyond that, no one else appears to be on board with Hosemann’s plan. And again, the Legislature as a whole hasn’t even held committee meetings on this.
Adam Ganucheau: Sure. Sure. Well, very, very interesting times for sure. Geoff, thanks as always for being here and helping us understand it better. And thanks for all your coverage of it. We’ll be following along closely. Thanks for being here.
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Subscribe to our weekly podcast on your favorite podcast app or stream episodes online at MississippiToday.org/the-other-side. For the Mississippi Today team, I’m Adam Ganucheau. The Other Side is produced by Mississippi Today and engineered by Blue Sky Studios. We hope you’ll join us for our next episode.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Sandra Shelson, head of The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi. Shelson, who grew up in Jackson, began her career as a lawyer but transitioned from traditional law to prevention efforts to help kids.
The Partnership has been a national leader in tobacco prevention since its inception in 1998, developing interactive educational and training programs for youth and adults that focus on long-term behavioral and cultural change. Twenty years after the settlement, tobacco prevalence among middle and high school students has dropped significantly. Lessons learned from tobacco prevention are now being applied to the childhood obesity epidemic in Mississippi, as they continue to work with their partners to improve health outcomes for all Mississippians.
