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Two key state education boards may not have enough members to carry out their duties, and Gov. Tate Reeves, who is responsible for filling most of the vacancies, still hasn’t said when he might make the necessary appointments.

The Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning starting Friday will have just eight members — exactly enough for a quorum. The Board of Education currently has five members — exactly enough for a quorum. This means that the state’s top education boards cannot legally meet if one member is absent or has to recuse themselves, which is a regular occurrence on both boards.

Reeves has made no public comments on when he will name appointments for the vacancies. Because he did not make the appointments before the end of the 2021 legislative session, there are questions of whether he can make the appointments without calling a special session of the Mississippi Senate.

READ MORE: Top education boards may lack quorums after inaction from Gov. Tate Reeves

The Constitution mandates that the Senate confirm the appointments to both boards. And legal opinions and documents from legislative committees seem to suggest that Reeves will have to call a special session to confirm his appointments or wait for the Senate to reconvene for the 2022 regular session, which starts in January.

The terms of four members of the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning, which oversees the state’s eight public universities, will expire on May 7, leaving the panel with just enough members to constitute a quorum under the board’s guidelines.

Reeves’ office did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today on when he might fill the four college board seats.

“The bottom line is, Friday night at 12:01, the four trustees in our class roll off the board, and our nine-year term is over,” said Ford Dye of Oxford, the former chair of the IHL Board.

It will be difficult for the IHL Board to function with only eight members. On any issue where a member recuses themselves — which occurs nearly every meeting — the board will not have enough votes to make a decision.

In addition to the issues with the 12-member IHL Board, the nine-member state Education Board has been operating with only five members. Under that panel’s guidelines, five members constitute a quorum. A meeting in November had to be canceled because of a lack of a quorum.

Two of the vacancies on the Education Board are the governor’s responsibility to fill, while Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Philip Gunn each have one seat to fill.

To further complicate matters, the term of Northern District Education Board member Karen Elam is set to expire this June. That post also is a gubernatorial appointee. 

Education Board Chair Rosemary Aultman of Clinton said both she and state Superintendent of Education Carey Wright have inquired about the vacancies.

“We have not heard anything specifically other than an appointment was forthcoming,” she said of conversations with Reeves.

Aultman said Gunn also has assured her that he is working to fill his appointment.

“I’ve spoken with him (Gunn) about that, and he indicated that he was very much aware of it and he had two candidates he was looking at and would be making a decision soon … but it is encouraging that he is working on it,” Aultman said.

Leah Rupp, a spokesperson for Hosemann, said the lieutenant governor also is interviewing potential candidates for the Board of Education seat he is responsible for filling.

In March, legal experts told Mississippi Today there is a question of whether the appointees could begin serving prior to the next legislative session, which could be either a special session called by the governor or the 2022 regular session.

The attorney general, in a 1977 opinion, seemed to support the argument that for regularly scheduled vacancies, the governor must make the appointments in the session before the vacancy occurs or wait until the next session. The opinion stated when a “term is about to expire and will expire by limitation before the next session of the Senate, the governor should nominate a person to fill the vacancy,” and “if he fails to do so, he cannot make a valid appointment to fill such a vacancy in the vacation of the Senate.” If the governor tried to do so, it “would be to limit and abridge the right of the Senate to advise and consent to the appointment.”

A 2015 document compiled by the Legislature’s Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Committee reaches essentially the same conclusion.

The PEER report said state law “requires” that the governor make the appointment in the session before any regularly scheduled vacancy set to occur within nine months of the legislative session. But the report goes on the say that in many instances, the governor has appointed someone after the session ended and that appointee began serving prior to being considered by the Senate in the next regular session.

“This practice is in direct contravention of” state law, the PEER report concluded.

A Mississippi Today analysis of previous appointments found that former governors Phil Bryant and Haley Barbour submitted their college board appointments to the Senate in the session before the appointees’ tenures began. Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove made some college board appointments after the session ended, and they began serving before they were confirmed by the Senate.

In 1996, former Gov. Kirk Fordice made four college board appointments who were rejected by a Senate subcommittee in the regular session prior to when their terms were scheduled to begin. Fordice, arguing that the four had not been rejected because they were not considered by the full Senate Universities and Colleges Committee, called a special session, where they were then rejected by the full committee. Fordice later called a special session prior to the start of the next regular session where four new appointees were confirmed.

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Mississippi lost population for just the third time in state history, according to preliminary census number released last week. Mississippi Today journalists Bobby Harrison and Adam Ganucheau discuss what that means for the Legislature’s upcoming redistricting process.

Listen here:

The post Podcast: What Mississippi’s population loss means for future elections appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Health care advocates, many health care providers and others who desperately want to see the state expand Medicaid to cover primarily the working poor blame Gov. Tate Reeves for blocking the effort.

But on the issue of Medicaid expansion, Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn, who have had their share of disagreements in recent years, are in lockstep. Gunn deserves as much of the blame or credit, depending on one’s perspective, for blocking Medicaid expansion as Reeves.

Because Gunn was ahead of nearly all of the state’s Republican leadership in support for changing the state flag to remove the controversial Confederate battle emblem from its design, and is generally credited with leading the effort to accomplish that feat, many have assumed that the third-term speaker would eventually come around on Medicaid expansion.

That has not occurred.

Gunn has often spoken of his Christian faith as a prime motivator in his support for changing the flag.

“We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us,” Gunn said in 2015 after the tragic murder of nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. “As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed.”

Gunn’s Christian faith has often manifested itself in his politics, whether it be on anti-abortion bills, anti-human trafficking efforts or the bill he authored in 2016 to allow government and private sector employees to not provide services to same-sex couples based on religious objections.

Many religious leaders who might agree with Gunn on many issues also have said their support for Medicaid expansion is based on their faith.

More than 300 Mississippi religious leaders signed a letter earlier this year in support of Medicaid expansion.

“God does not ask us at the judgment day if we have decreased the size of government. But God will ask us how we have treated the poor and how we’ve treated the most vulnerable among us,” the Rt. Rev. Brian Seage, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, said during a March news conference in support of Medicaid expansion.

Perhaps in a display of the diversity of religious beliefs, Gunn — a Baptist and church leader in his hometown of Clinton — obviously does not see Medicaid expansion in the same light as Seage and other Christian leaders who signed the letter.

“I am not open to Medicaid expansion,” Gunn said at the end of the 2021 session in April. “… I don’t see Medicaid expansion as something that is beneficial to the state of Mississippi. I just don’t think the taxpayers can afford it. That is what it boils down to is the taxpayers. It is their money. I just don’t have taxpayers calling saying we want you to raise taxes so we can expand Medicaid.”

Gunn argues that the “most sick, those who are the poorest,” have health care coverage now. He said expansion is “to bring in another class of citizens who are not in the lowest category. This would be the next tier up. I just do not think we can afford it.”

In Mississippi, the disabled, poor children, poor pregnant women and some categories of the elderly are covered by Medicaid. In most instances, able-bodied adults who cannot afford private or employer-based health insurance have no health care other than going to an emergency room.

In part to curtail expensive ER visits, federal law allows states to expand Medicaid to cover primarily the working poor — as many as 300,000 in Mississippi — with the federal government paying 90% of the costs. Plus, federal COVID-19 relief legislation provides the 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid an additional financial incentive — an estimated $600 million over two years for Mississippi — to expand Medicaid. This means for at least two years, Mississippi would likely be making money by expanding Medicaid.

Even after that two-year period, various studies have contended that Medicaid expansion would generate revenue for the state because of the economic impact of the federal health care dollars coming into Mississippi.

Gunn, Reeves and many other in the state’s political leadership discount those studies. Gunn, who views many state political issues within the prism of his religious beliefs, sees Medicaid expansion solely as a program to grow the government, which he opposes as a fiscal conservative.

And as long as Gunn has those views, it is unlikely that Medicaid expansion will happen through the legislative process in Mississippi.

That is why others, including many religious leaders, will be working to gather the signatures to place Medicaid expansion on the ballot for Mississippi voters to decide. The outcome of that effort might rest on whether voters view Medicaid expansion as a religious or fiscal issue.

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The NFL Draft has become such a monstrosity of a production. We’ve had mock drafts coming out for weeks, if not months. Talking heads have been talking about it, and writing fingers have been typing about it — ad nauseam. The event is nationally televised over three days before a packed house of seemingly crazy people.

It has not always been thus. If you don’t believe it, ask Archie Manning. Fifty years ago, in 1971, he was the second pick of the first round. He almost missed it.

“I’ll never forget it,” Manning said Friday afternoon from his New Orleans home. But 50 years ago, he almost did forget about it. He almost forgot the draft itself.

“Back then it was in January, less than a month after we played in the Gator Bowl, just a couple weeks after I played in the Hula Bowl.”

Yes, and somewhere in that busy time preceding the draft, Archie and Olivia Manning were married and honeymooned in Acapulco. They had just moved into an apartment in Oxford.

On the day before the draft, which was held in New York, Manning’s phone rang. The caller was Billy Gates, the late, great Ole Miss sports information director.

“Arch, did you know the NFL Draft is tomorrow?” Gates said.

“I guess I kind of forgot,” Manning replied.

Gates told him that indeed the draft was the next day and that seemingly everybody and his brother was calling him, asking him where Manning would be the next day.

“The Patriots have called,” Gates told him. “The Saints have called. So have the Houston Oilers. I’m pretty sure one of those three teams is going to pick you.”

The Patriots were picking first, the Saints second and the Oilers third. All needed a quarterback.

“Why don’t you come over to my office tomorrow morning at 9 and I’ll let them all know you’re going to be here,” Gates said.

Manning said he would, and he did. And that’s where he heard the news the Patriots had taken Jim Plunkett, the 1970 Heisman Trophy winner out of Stanford, with the first pick. Just minutes later, Gates’ phone rang and the New Orleans Saints were on the line. Gates handed the phone to Manning who learned he was to be a Saint.

“I talked to John Mecom, the Saints owner, for I guess two minutes,” Manning said. “Then Mecom put their general manager, Vic Schwenk, on the phone and I talked to him for a couple of minutes. And then he put J.D. Roberts, the head coach, on the phone and we talked a couple minutes more. There was an Associated Press photographer in the office taking a few pictures.”

And then?

“That was it,” Manning said, laughing. “That was my draft day. I had a 10 o’clock class. I made it to class on time. There just wasn’t a whole lot to it.”

Remember, this was after Manning, himself, almost forgot about it.

The draft just wasn’t that big a deal back then. Actually, it was more of an ordeal. The 1971 draft went 17 rounds, during which the Saints took 21 players. I use loosely the term “players.” The Saints missed on a whole lot more of those picks than they hit.

Manning remembers getting out of class, going home and learning that Michigan offensive tackle Dan Dierdorf, an All American whom Manning had befriended at the Hula Bowl, had somehow not been picked in the first round.

“I was pretty excited about that,” Manning said. “I knew the Saints needed some offensive linemen, and I knew how good Dan Dierdorf was. I told Olivia: Looks like we’re going to get Dierdorf.”

Then came the news: With their second round pick, the Saints chose Grambling offensive tackle Sam Holden. 

Dan Dierdorf played 13 seasons, was named All-Pro five times, made the All-NFL team of the decade of the 1970s and eventually was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Holden lasted one season and started as many games as you and I.

There was a lot of that kind of buffoonery going on with the Saints back then. As a result, Manning was often running for his life and sometimes throwing to receivers he scarcely practiced with. Still, 50 years later, he remains one of the most beloved Saints of them all.  You go to the Superdome on a Saints Sunday, you still see hundreds of fans wearing No. 8, and you also see No. 8 hanging from the rafters. There’s a story about that, too.

The day after the draft, the New Orleans newspaper ran a photo of the Saints brass holding up a Saints jersey, No. 18, which was the number Manning famously wore at Ole Miss, and the number the Saints were planning for him to wear with the Saints.

And this will tell you something about Archie Manning. Hugo Hollis, a Saints safety, was No. 18. Manning wasn’t about to take another player’s number. That’s how Manning became No. 8. And the 1971 draft, 50 years ago, was how he became a Saint.

The post Fifty years ago, Archie Manning, the 2nd pick, almost forgot NFL Draft appeared first on Mississippi Today.

More than 14 months after COVID-19 reached Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves has rolled back all COVID-related restrictions except one. 

Reeves’ new executive order, issued Friday, essentially returns the state to the way things were before the pandemic. The only remaining statewide order that remains in place is the requirement that masks be worn inside school buildings through the end of the 2020-2021 academic school year.

Seating caps for collegiate sporting events and K-12 extracurricular activities are being lifted by the new order, which is set to go into effect at 5 p.m. today. On Twitter, Reeves cited upcoming graduation ceremonies as a motivator for removing capacity restrictions. 

In the order, Reeves does recommend that Mississippians continue to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Mississippi State Department of Health guidelines on COVID-19 safety, which include wearing a mask in all public spaces, social distancing and hand-washing.

Reeves repealed most COVID-related restrictions in early March. Reeves has drawn criticism from both sides of the political spectrum over his handling of COVID-19 in Mississippi, with some decrying any COVID-related executive order as “tyrannical” and others panning his patchwork approach to mask mandates.

The Mississippi State Department of Health reported on Friday that 949,833 people in Mississippi — about 32% of the state’s population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Just over 788,000 people have received both doses since the state began distributing vaccines in December. Thousands of vaccination appointments are currently available on the MSDH vaccine scheduler. All Mississippians ages 16 and up are currently eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

MAP: Where Mississippians can get the COVID-19 vaccine

The post Gov. Reeves ends previous COVID-19 restrictions, keeps school mask mandate appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A fire at Jackson’s water treatment plant lowers water pressure yet again.

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Gov. Tate Reeves, the top elected official representing the blackest state in America, said on national television Thursday that systemic racism does not exist within the criminal justice system.

In a Fox News town hall Thursday with several Republican governors, Reeves was asked to respond to President Joe Biden’s comments this week about justice system racism and police reform.

“There is not systemic racism in America,” Reeves responded, garnering applause from the live Fox News audience. “We live in the greatest country in the history of mankind. In Mississippi, I was proud of the fact that we had peaceful protesters but we did not have one event in which there was a riot. The reason for that is in our state that we back the blue, we support the police.”

In some political circles, the term “systemic racism” is often misunderstood (or purposefully portrayed) as meaning that every individual within a system is racist. The opposite is true. The term means the systems, by the way they were originally designed and regardless of the intentions of the individuals involved today, disproportionately harm people of color.

In Mississippi, with its well-documented history of overtly racist policymaking and policing, the effects are especially clear. Many of the justice-related laws that still disproportionately harm Black Mississippians were crafted in the 1890s — the start of the Jim Crow era, when white politicians worked to grab power back from Black leaders following Reconstruction.

Reeves was asked to respond to a clip from Biden’s State of the Union speech on Wednesday.

“We have all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black Americans. Now is our opportunity to make some real progress,” Biden said. “The vast majority, men and women wearing the uniform and a badge, serve our communities and they serve them honorably. I know them, I know they want — I know they want to help meet this moment as well. My fellow Americans, we have to come together to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the people they serve, to root out systematic racism in our criminal justice system and enact police reform in George Floyd’s name that passed the House already.”

In America and in Mississippi, the numbers speak for themselves. Setting aside illustrative data in other sectors of society and government, here is just a sampling of data that shows vast racial disparities within the Mississippi criminal justice system:

• As of April 2021, 64% of incarcerated people in Mississippi are Black, despite only making up 38% of the state’s total population.

• On average, 1,052 of every 100,000 Black Mississippians is currently incarcerated, compared to 346 of every 100,000 white Mississippians being currently incarcerated.

• On average, 383 of every 100,000 Black juveniles were in custody, compared to 83 of every 100,000 white juveniles being in custody in Mississippi, according to 2015 data.

• Black Mississippians made up 71.5% of those serving life-without-parole sentences, according to a 2013 study from The Sentencing Project.

• A 2018 analysis by Mississippi Today found that 61% of the Mississippians who have lost their rights to vote based on felony charges are African American, despite the fact that African Americans represent just 36% of the state’s total voting-age population.

• 16% of voting-aged Black Mississippians had lost their rights to vote because of the felony disenfranchisement laws, according to a 2020 study by The Sentencing Project.

• National studies suggest prosecutors disproportionately strike Black citizens while selecting juries. While there is no comprehensive state-level data, several anecdotes suggest this is a major problem in Mississippi. American Public Media’s “In the Dark” podcast reported in 2018 on the 26-year career of central Mississippi District Attorney Doug Evans. Reporters found that his office struck 50% of prospective Black jurors versus just 11% of whites.

READ MORE: Gov. Reeves said he wanted to promote unity. Then he declared Confederate Memorial Day.

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So when it finally came time for the New Orleans Saints to pick in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft Thursday night, many folks, including this one, thought they might opt for Ole Miss wide receiver Elijah Moore, the best college player in Mississippi this past season.

ESPN’s draft expert Mel Kiper was calling Moore the most under-valued player in the entire draft, rating him as the 16th best talent. New Orleans, picking at No. 28, has long needed another wide receiver to take some of the pressure off Michael Thomas. Moore has many attributes including speed and ability to make people miss, but what I like most about him is the same attribute I love about Thomas: He catches the ball. He would have given Sean Payton one more badly needed weapon in his offensive arsenal: Flank Thomas wide, put Moore in the slot, and then swing running back Alvin Kamara out to that side. Good luck, defense.

Still, there was no way I was surprised when Roger Goodell did not call Moore’s name. That’s because the Saints did what they usually do when it comes to their first pick of the draft. That is, they went for a lineman — in this case Houston defensive end Payton Turner, a guy few if any had going in the first round. 

And that makes seven straight drafts the Saints have used their first pick for an offensive or defensive lineman. You can knock that policy all you want, but you also must realize that since 2016 only two NFL teams, the Chiefs and the Patriots, have achieved more victories than the Saints. Clearly, the Saints have been doing a lot of things right and drafting is certainly one. One thing never changes about football: Most games are won in the trenches.

The Saints have made some amazingly good first choices during those years, such as All-Pro tackle Ryan Ramczyk in 2017. They also have missed on occasion, such as when they traded up in the 2018 draft to the No. 14 position to choose UTSA defensive end Marcus Davenport. In three seasons, playing in 37 games, Davenport has produced 12 sacks, including just 1.5 last season. Those aren’t first-round numbers. Put it this way: Had Davenport been what the Saints thought he would be, they would not have been drafting another defensive end in the first round three years later. And while it’s true that it’s too early to call Davenport a total bust, he seems to be trending in that direction. 

So, let’s take a look at Turner, the long, limbed, 6-foot-5, 270-pound defensive end the Saints chose Thursday night. He is the proverbial late bloomer, a former two-star recruit from the Houston area. That’s one reason why he might not have been high on a lot of draft charts. Another reason is this: He played in only five games in 2020 because of COVID-19 and injuries.

Turner, Houston’s team captain, did make those five games count. Turner recorded 25 tackles, five sacks and 10.5 tackles for loss in those five games. One of those was against Tulane, where new Southern Miss coach Will Hall was the offensive coordinator for the past two seasons.

Asked about Turner, Hall replied: “He’s a really dynamic pass rusher who improved dramatically from 2019 to 2020. He’s got tons of upside, could be a legit edge guy in the NFL. He’s an Alabama or Georgia type talent. Long and physical.” 

Against Tulane, Turner finished with 4.5 tackles for loss, two sacks and seven tackles overall.

Said Hall, “He dominated us. We could not block him.”

The Saints would have loved to have used the pick for a badly needed cornerback, but the four best available all went before New Orleans had a pick. The Saints reportedly tried to trade up to pick South Carolina’s Jaycee Horn, son of former Saint Joe Horn, but the price was just too high.

Time will tell if the choice of Turner, which many consider a reach, pays off. Time also will tell about whether all the teams that passed on Moore made a huge mistake.

I suspect it might turn out like the 2019 draft when every team picking in the first round passed on Rebels A.J. Brown and DK Metcalf in the first round. Remember? Both lasted well into the second round before the Titans chose Brown and the Seahawks took Metcalf. In two seasons, Brown has scored 21 touchdowns, Metcalf 17. Both have played in a Pro Bowl. 

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