Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued a state of emergency on Saturday “to put assets in place” to deal with Hurricane Ida, the strong storm that will affect Mississippi and Louisiana starting on Sunday.
Reeves said that the center of the storm is expected to hit neat Morgan City, La., — about 85 miles west of New Orleans — and present significant dangers to Mississippi in terms of heavy rain and strong winds throughout most of the state and strong storm surge on the Gulf Coast.
“This is a storm that is unlike normal in that it popped up literally less than 48 hours ago as a tropical depression, and here we are talking about it hitting landfall as early 2 p.m. tomorrow,” Reeves said on Saturday afternoon during a news conference at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Rankin County.
While rainfall could be as much as 20 inches in parts of southwest Mississippi and the Gulf Coast, the governor said that the rain could be as much as 4 inches to 8 inches throughout the state.
In addition, widespread power outages are anticipated across the state as the center of the storm moves through central and northern Mississippi, said Stephen McCraney, MEMA executive director.
“We are better prepared today than we were for Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, but this time we also are dealing with a major pandemic,” said Jim Craig, director of health protection with the Mississippi State Department of Health. Craig urged people going to shelters and to other places to continue to wear masks and take other precautions to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Shelter locations can be found at the MSEMA.org.
Hurricane Katrina hit exactly 16 years from Sunday — the date Hurricane Ida is supposed to come ashore. Katrina’s landfall resulted in unprecedented destruction both in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Reeves said the forecast could change, but as projected Saturday afternoon, the center of the storm could enter Mississippi by early Monday morning, be near Vicksburg by Monday around 7 p.m., and be near Batesville by Tuesday at 7 a.m.
The governor said storm surge on the Mississippi Gulf Coast could rise to as much as 11 feet.
With the state of emergency declaration, the governor said local, state and federal rescue teams will be on standby, and he said he has been in conversations with President Joe Biden to formulate plans to transport patients as needed to deal with hospitals that have been over capacity because of COVID-19 and could be called upon to treat additional patients because of the powerful hurricane.
Craig said state health department COVID-19 testing and vaccinations will be suspended at some locations on Monday in south and central Mississippi and would reopen depending on conditions.
Reeves said the path of the storm could still change in the coming hours, but that it is expected to reach central Mississippi, including the Jackson Metro area, on Monday.
Traffic on Interstate 55, Interstate 10 and other thoroughfares in Mississippi was heavy by Saturday afternoon as people evacuated from south Louisiana, New Orleans and low-lying areas of Hancock County in Mississippi.
McCraney urged Mississippians to take backroads and leave the crowded interstates to the people from Louisiana fleeing the storm.
“We know our backroads,” McCraney said.
Ida on Saturday reached Category 2 strength on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, with winds from 96mph to 110mph, capable of extensive damage. Forecast give the possibility of Ida reaching a Category 4 before landfall, which would mean winds from 130 mph to 156 mph, bringing likely catastrophic damages to homes and buildings.
Wind warnings for south Mississippi were for sustained 74 mile per hour winds — at the bottom end of hurricane strength and still capable of extensive damage. For Mississippi, there is also a threat of tornadoes being spawned throughout much of the state as the storm moves inland. Saturday forecasts warned that hurricane-force gusts could extend well inland into Mississippi, and heavy rain and gusts up to 60 miles per hour through central Mississippi.
In Saturday’s forecasts, Mississippi was expected to be spared a direct hit, but to be on the east side — the worst, particularly for flooding rains — of Ida, and the storm is expected to track through western and central Mississippi as it moves inland. The National Weather Service extended tropical storm warnings from Lake Charles, La., through Mobile, Ala.
Forecasts also warned of storm surge through the Mississippi Coast from 7 feet to 11 feet, which would bring major flooding to low-lying areas. The forecast also predicts heavy rainfall for parts of Mississippi — up to 20 inches in isolated areas.
Mississippi Gulf Coast hospitals, overrun with COVID-19 patients and understaffed to handle the growing health care crisis, are preparing for another potential disaster: Hurricane Ida.
As Ida churns toward the Gulf states, Coast hospitals say they’re still waiting on the additional nurses called in by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to help manage the COVID-19 patient surge. Severe weather brought on by a hurricane — even if Ida doesn’t make direct landfall in Mississippi — could add even more stress to an already struggling health care system.
“Access to care is a national issue, but a hurricane makes it even worse,” said Randall Cobb, the Singing River Health System’s director of facilities and support. “Hospitals are at capacity. In our emergency departments, there are multiple-hour wait times.”
Ida is forecast to be a Category 3 or 4 storm by the time it makes landfall late Sunday or early Monday, bringing the possibility of deadly conditions, long-lasting power outages, flash flooding and high-speed winds. The storm’s projected path as of Friday afternoon places its landfall in Louisiana, though that prediction could change.
Mississippi’s three Gulf Coast counties — Hancock, Harrison and Jackson — were under hurricane watches on Friday afternoon.
“Having a large patient census during any storm is never desirable, as it requires us to house more resources than normal, which equals more people in harm’s way,” said Gulfport Memorial’s safety officer Ken McDowell. “Essentially, we are implementing two emergency plans at one time for both the pandemic and the hurricane.”
Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Tuesday about 1,000 additional health care workers would be deployed across 61 Mississippi hospitals due to the COVID staffing shortages. Singing River’s hospitals in Ocean Springs, Gulfport and Pascagoula are expecting 53 nurses, but they have yet to arrive.
“We just don’t know a time frame of how soon that will be,” said the hospital system’s spokeswoman Sarah Duffey.
Gulfport’s Memorial Hospital had 83 patients with COVID-19 as of Friday afternoon, 22 of whom were on ventilators. Memorial said they, too, were still waiting on the MEMA clinicians to arrive.
Reeves said hospitals would start receiving the new staffers within nine days of their request. Singing River has welcomed about a dozen new respiratory therapists and two paramedics so far.
But it’s the additional nurses the hospitals need to actually grow the number of patients they can care for, Duffey said.
Cobb said because of the staffing shortages and already long waits, Gulf Coast residents need to be aware of whether their health concerns during the hurricane are more appropriate for a special needs shelter — which will have generated power during outages and oxygen canisters on hand — rather than emergency rooms.
“If you cannot breathe at all, absolutely come to the hospital,” Cobb said. “But if you’re running low on oxygen or concerned you’re going to run low, the counties have put some things in place so they’re prepared.”
Hospitals will continue to triage care following any major storm. That means new patients are treated in order of the severity of their ailment. The capacity issues are all the more reason to heed any travel warnings or mandatory evacuation early next week.
“Stay off the road and stay safe, unless you have a true emergency,” said Memorial’s chief administration office April LaFontaine. “This will allow for us to keep emergency rooms and facilities available for patients who really need them.”
Cobb said Singing River’s hospitals prepare to have a week’s worth of supplies and power should a direct hit devastate the region. Memorial has its emergency generators ready with five extras on standby.
After just 19 minutes of discussion, the board of trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning approved a motion Friday not to require the COVID-19 vaccine for students and employees at Mississippi’s eight public universities.
The 9-2 college board vote came the same week that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, which many faculty and staff had hoped would open the door for the IHL or the universities to require the vaccine. Even Alfred McNair, one of the 12 trustees on the IHL board, had speculated that FDA approval might make requiring the COVID-19 vaccine politically tenable.
“We’re seeing a lot of young folks dying in the hospital right now, cause it’s mostly youth not taking the vaccine,” McNair said at an IHL health committee meeting last week. “Hopefully if this gets approved in September, we can maybe go beyond that, because these young people, this virus is attacking them big time.”
McNair was joined by Steven Cunningham, a radiologist and the only other physician on the board, in voting against the resolution. Trustee Gee Ogletree was not present at the meeting.
In a press release sent after the vote, J. Walt Starr, the IHL board president, acknowledged the vaccine is “the best protection against COVID-19 infections, transmissions, and has been medically reviewed and approved by our country’s leading scientific experts.”
The board encourages “all eligible students and employees within the university system to get vaccinated against COVID-19,” he said.
“However, the board does not deem it prudent to require it as a condition of employment or enrollment, except at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and other clinical settings,” Starr added.
While any of the eight public universities could choose to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine on their campuses, some university presidents had said they would not do that unless the IHL board voted to require it first. IHL’s decision seemingly foreclosed the possibility that those schools might mandate the vaccine.
Conducted over Zoom to a nearly empty room in the Research and Education Complex in Jackson, the emergency meeting began with Starr opening up discussion to his colleagues. Just one concerned parent of a university student showed up to express his support of not requiring the vaccine. The rest of the attendees were reporters.
McNair and Cunningham were the first trustees to speak. Their arguments, which emphasized a vaccine mandate would protect the health of college students,failed to persuade the rest of the board.
McNair told the board that his position was informed by his work on the COVID response in Biloxi where he has seen the effect of the virus on college-aged people.
“My point of view: Taking care of these patients every day, what I’m seeing is the younger patients who are the ones in trouble,” McNair said. “These young people think they’re immune, but actually that’s where the virus is hitting, and the colleges are just wide open for it.”
Cunningham chimed in: “As the other physician on the board, I concur. We’ve tried doing this on a volunteer basis, but I really think mandating is gonna be the only way to help save some of these kids.”
The other trustees countered by speculating that thousands of students and parents might ask for a refund if the vaccine were mandated. They further surmised that a mandate might not be necessary because the virus has reached its peak.
“I’m not sure if we have the information, but I’d be curious to see: I’ve spoken with a couple other doctors recently who think we’ve peaked and that we may be about to see a downturn,” IHL trustee Teresa Hubbard said. “I’m not quite sure how they justify that or where that information comes from, but do we have anything to support that information?”
“We really don’t know for sure,” IHL Commissioner Al Rankins said in response, “but … there have been some reports to that effect.”
Bruce Martin, an insurance agent, said he had seen that delta’s “RT-factor,” or transmission rate, is dropping in Mississippi, but did not say where he’d read that. “That would indicate that it’s getting better if that thing that everybody talks about is a correct indicator,” he said.
McNair pushed back by pointing out that the transmission rate depends on who is and is not getting vaccinated in a community. “When you start getting a whole bunch of kids together … unvaccinated together, these numbers are going to go back up.”
“Another issue, peak or no peak,” Cunningham added, “you’re gonna have a significant number of unvaccinated people out there and that means you have a significant number of available hosts for this thing to jump to and mutate again to the next Greek letter variant.”
But McNair and Cunningham’s arguments did not convince the other nine trustees.
“There’s a certain segment of the population that is not going to get vaccinated, and it just boggles my mind but they will just not do it and us mandating it is not going to make those people do it,” Martin said. “We’ve taken their money, they’ve enrolled in the school, and I don’t know how in the world you’re going to get people to be vaccinated by demanding they be vaccinated, because they’re just not gonna do it.”
Trustee Hal Parker said he agreed. Starr asked Rankins, the commissioner, how a mandate would affect students, given they have already enrolled in the school. Rankins surmised that some students who are strongly opposed to getting the vaccine might leave school.
At that point in the discussion, it was clear the trustees had already determined how they were going to vote.
“I’m wondering what we can do to strongly encourage, and that way … we don’t infringe on freedoms, but just put so much information out there that the one conclusion we hope everyone comes to is that they do decide to get the vaccine,” said trustee Ormella Cummings, who works as the chief strategy officer for North Mississippi Health Services.”
Trustee Jeanne Luckey, who owns a real estate company, suggested revisiting the vaccine mandate next year.
“If we mandate the vaccine now it would be difficult to go back and say it is no longer mandated,” she said.
Trustee Chip Morgan, the last trustee to speak, said he respected McNair and Cunningham’s perspectives but that mandating the vaccine at this time would be a “terrible mistake.”
Starr asked if any of the trustees had more comments, then Morgan made a motion for the board to support the vaccine, but not require it.
“We ought to say at this time, it’s our view that we would not impose any requirements on the universities to mandate vaccination,” he said.
Classes started this week at Jackson State University, University of Mississippi and University of Southern Mississippi. Classes started the week of Aug. 16 at Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, and Mississippi Valley State University.
More than 80% of Mississippi’s K-12 school districts require masks or face coverings to be worn on campus. However, that still leaves 78,324 students under no mask requirement, including two of the biggest school districts in the state — Harrison County School District with 13,666 students and DeSoto County School District with 34,067, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education’s website.
View a visualization of Mississippi’s K-12 student population divided by how many are or are not subject to a mask requirement in their district:
Students under a mask requirement
364,303
Students NOT under a mask requirement
78,324
In addition to Desoto County and Harrison County school districts, the other 13 mask-optional districts include:
• Baldwyn School District (753) • Enterprise School District (924) • Itawamba County School District (3,378) • Lee County School District (6,389) • Lincoln County School District (2,733) • Monroe County School District (2,095) • Nettleton School District (1,170) • North Tippah School District (1,259) • Petal School District (4,106) • Senatobia Municipal School District (1,676) • Stone County School District (2,334) • Tate County School District (2,097) • Walthall County School District (1,677)
As lawmakers haggle over a medical marijuana program to replace one passed by voters but shot down by the Mississippi Supreme Court, state Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson says because marijuana is still federally illegal, he doesn’t want to help oversee any program.
“All of us elected officials took an oath of office to ‘faithfully support the Constitution of the United States … and obey the laws thereof,’” Gipson wrote in a letter to Attorney General Lynn Fitch copied to lawmakers. “… please explain how this office or the Department (of Agriculture) could legally license the growing and/or processing of a marijuana crop in violation of federal law.”
Lawmakers proposed legislation this year, and are considering measures now, that would have Gipson’s agency license and regulate marijuana growers and processors. Initiative 65, passed by voters in November, would have had the state Health Department oversee the entire program, although it could have brought other agencies in to help. The state Board of Health had opposed the Health Department being put in charge of the program, and opposed Initiative 65 as well.
Gipson, in a Supertalk radio interview on Friday, said he does not see how his office could participate in a program that is still federally illegal. He said he already has a legal challenge drafted if lawmakers approve such a measure.
Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, who’s leading Senate negotiations on a medical marijuana program, on Friday said he had not spoken with Gipson, but noted that many of the 38 states with medical marijuana programs have their agriculture agencies providing oversight.
In his letter to the attorney general, Gipson said: “If the Mississippi Legislature were to enact and the governor were to sign into state law a medical marijuana program, how would it be legal under the federal act to truck, ship, deliver, manufacture, distribute or dispense any part of the cannabis seed or plant as a Schedule 1 substance into the state of Mississippi?”
While marijuana remains federally illegal, federal authorities have looked the other way as many states have legalized medical or recreational use. Congress has failed to act on the issue. This has caused problems with banking and finances for the industry and with interstate commerce.
So many students and teachers are contracting COVID-19 in the Lincoln County School District in the first weeks of fall classes that leaders transitioned two of their school systems to a hybrid schedule.
But the district remains one of just 15 in the state where mask-wearing is optional. Lincoln County Superintendent David Martin, in an interview, said he doesn’t believe masks are effective, so he “left the decision up to parents.”
Mississippi Today spoke with two teachers in the district — one of whom recently contracted COVID-19 and both of whom wished to remain anonymous for fear of professional retaliation. Their perspectives provide insight into what’s occurring inside mask-optional districts as more than 30,000 students across Mississippi are quarantined less than a month into the school year.
And their stories show how children and staff are not being kept safe in Lincoln County, where just 28% of residents are fully vaccinated.
“The system that Lincoln County schools have in place is broken,” one teacher said. “They are putting teachers, staff members and students at risk. And they are overworking the underpaid nurses on staff.”
Lincoln County is not the only school district in the state still not requiring masks in its schools. A Mississippi Today analysis shows it is joined by 14 other districts, including two of the state’s largest: DeSoto and Harrison counties. Several of those have already transitioned to virtual learning and hybrid schedules due to outbreaks, according to the districts’ websites.
Many districts began the school year without a mask requirement but quickly pivoted as cases and quarantines surged. Numerous studies show the effectiveness of mask-wearing in close quarters like classrooms, and countless medical experts, including the state’s major medical organizations, insist that mask-wearing in schools decreases the chances of COVID-19 transmission. New guidelines from the Mississippi Department of Health state close contacts in the school setting do not have to quarantine if both they and the infected person were wearing masks at the time of exposure.
Dr. Anita Henderson, the president of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians, said not only do masks work, they help kids stay in school.
“Last year during the school year, most Mississippi schools were able to teach kids in-person because of universal masking within the school setting,” Henderson said. “This year, however, when school started with masks optional, we quickly saw the widespread transmission among children.”
The Lincoln County School District began the year without safety measures such as spacing in the cafeteria and in the carpool line and sanitizing desks between classes, one of the teachers said.
The teacher also recently tested positive for COVID-19, which she believes she got at school. She said she was not told to quarantine despite being exposed.
Martin, however, said the district is taking safety measures.
“We are following procedures and protocols for spacing, cleaning and quarantine,” Martin told Mississippi Today.
To add insult to injury, the teacher said she is burning through her own vacation and sick time because the Lincoln County school board elected not to offer employees additional COVID-19 related leave.
“It just feels like you’re being kicked while you’re down,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’ve been put in danger, and then I’ll be further punished because I’m going to lose all my sick and personal days, and more than likely my family members are going to get sick, then I’ll be off (work) even longer taking care of them.”
At the time the teacher spoke to Mississippi Today, her child had already begun showing symptoms but was unable to get tested because of a lack of testing availability in the area.
Gov. Tate Reeves earlier this month extended the state’s emergency order through Sept. 15. One of the effects of that decision was that it allowed school boards to continue offering employees paid COVID-19 leave. That way, if teachers or staff members test positive, they do not use up all of their personal leave and potentially have their pay docked.
Tim Cunningham, the Lincoln County school board president, declined to answer questions when reached by Mississippi Today. Martin, the superintendent, said he believes teachers are not receiving COVID leave due to a “financial decision” because the district does not have a large budget.
“We’ve got a smaller budget, we don’t have the tax base” that some other districts have, Martin said.
Some districts are using federal funding to offset the cost of administrative leave for employees. Lincoln County schools received $4.7 million in the most recent round of funding from the American Rescue Plan. In earlier iterations of federal COVID-19 relief funding, the district received roughly another $2.6 million.
DeSoto County School District, the largest district in the state and one of the 10 districts that still does not require masks, approved an additional eight days of paid leave for employees who test positive for COVID-19. All school-level employees have also received an additional four days of sick leave to use. In Enterprise, another mask-optional district, employees were granted seven days of COVID-related leave, Superintendent Josh Perkins said.
Two of Lincoln County’s kindergarten through 12th grade schools, Loyd Star and West Lincoln, have recently transitioned to a hybrid schedule because of COVID-19 cases and quarantine numbers. Martin recently told the Daily Leader that a totally virtual schedule was “not an option” for students in the district because students don’t have reliable internet access.
Martin also sent a letter to parents on Aug. 23 informing that the schools’ rapid testing supply was running low.
“Each school will have to stop offering testing once their supply runs low,” the letter stated. Enterprise Attendance Center announced on its Facebook page the school would not be performing rapid testing on students until further notice.
The district did not report COVID-19 data for any of its schools for the week ending Aug. 20, the most recent data available, so the data used to determine the move is unknown.
Martin said the district did submit the data to the Mississippi Department of Health, but it was after the deadline had passed. District-wide, 70 students and 9 staff members tested positive for COVID-19 last week, and 278 students and 10 staff members were quarantined, he said.
The district has around 2,700 students, according to the state education department.
School districts are required to report their COVID-19 data weekly to the state health department. Mississippi Department of Health officials said the department’s protocol is to call a school to make sure administrators know the process for reporting, but it does not enforce the requirement in practice.
Only 28% of Lincoln County residents are fully vaccinated, according to the state health department. A total of 119 people in the county have died from the virus as of Aug. 14.
As lawmakers study eliminating Mississippi’s personal income tax and raising sales taxes in an effort to spur economic growth and jobs, state business leaders told them they either oppose or have trepidation about the plan.
The penultimate moment came late Thursday, in the second day of hearings for a joint House and Senate Tax Study Committee. Scott Waller, president of the state’s chamber of commerce, told lawmakers that no business leaders have voiced eliminating income taxes as a priority, but some fear it could have unintended consequences. Waller addressed House Speaker Philip Gunn — who’s leading the charge to eliminate the personal income tax — and members of the tax study panel.
“Where is this in the priorities we have?” Waller said. “We’ve been on the road, holding 39 meetings with members all across the state. I know you don’t want to hear this, Mr. Speaker, but this issue (personal income taxes) has not come up a single time as a priority, something we want to do.”
Waller said the state’s business community is more focused on workforce development and education, improving infrastructure, marketing the state and “keeping people here” — stopping the loss of population and “brain drain” in Mississippi, one of only three states to have lost population over the last decade.
Other business leaders testifying on Thursday included representatives of associations for manufacturers, auto dealers, manufactured housing, and restaurants and hospitality businesses.
Restaurant Association Director Pat Fontaine, in a prepared statement to the panel, said a sales tax increase would result “in a reduction in the frequency of dining out, or the decision to eat at home” and the proposed plan “would not benefit members of our industry at this time.”
The two days of tax hearings Wednesday and Thursday are in response to Speaker Gunn’s proposal to eliminate the state’s individual income tax and raise the state’s sales tax from 7% to 9.5%, along with increases in other user or “consumption” taxes. His plan, which passed the House but died in the Senate without a vote in this year’s legislative session, would also cut the sales tax on groceries in half, from 7% to 3.5%.
Gunn says his plan will give a net tax break to a vast majority of Mississippians while creating a better tax structure and being “revenue neutral” for the state budget while eventually cutting taxes overall by more than $740 million. He points to nine states without personal income taxes, including Florida, Tennessee and Texas, seeing large population and economic growth.
But others say the plan could hamstring the state budget, unfairly shift more tax burden onto the state’s low- to moderate-income families and retirees with higher sales taxes and hurt many businesses.
Waller said one concern business leaders have is that the state’s main incentives programs for luring new businesses include individual income tax credits for new jobs created — which would disappear with no income tax. He said there is also concern that limited liability corporations and other “pass through” types of businesses pay taxes through the owners’ personal income taxes. Eliminating the tax could leave the remaining “C-corp” businesses shouldering the tax burden, or cause many businesses to switch their formations, which could skew the projections on the tax change not hurting the state budget.
Lawmakers over two days heard from several economists, state budget officials and national tax think tank experts.
On Thursday, noted tax cut advocate and founder of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist told the panel that there is a “wave,” particularly among red states, of cutting or eliminating income taxes. He said Mississippi needs to seize the opportunity to be near the front of the pack to reap economic rewards from such a change.
“Pretty soon nobody’s going to be further than a hop, skip or jump from a no income tax state,” Norquist said. “The question is, do you want to be early on that?”
Most of the tax think tank experts testifying in the Mississippi hearings this week stopped short of endorsing Gunn’s specific plan. But Norquist said he supports it. He said that even though it includes increases in sales and other taxes, it is a net cut.
“It’s a fine bill, and it’s a step forward from where you are now,” Norquist said. “… It’s much better than what you’ve got now, and it’s a very good place to start.”
But Kyra Roby, with the nonprofit One Voice that advocates for marginalized and vulnerable communities across the South, said Mississippi’s tax code is already regressive, with poor people and those of modest means paying more of their income in taxes than the wealthy. The proposed shift from income to sales taxes will exacerbate that, she said, and provide more of a tax break for the wealthy.
A study of data compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy for One Voice showed disparity in taxation is worse for Black families, which pay an effective tax rate of 8.7% of their income compared to white families, who pay 8.2%. Hispanic families pay an effective rate of 9.1%.
Roby told lawmakers that even with the accompanying grocery tax cut, the proposed plan would mean an increase in taxes for the bottom 60% of Mississippi taxpayers and reduction for the top 40%.
Roby said the $1 billion surplus in the state budget — largely due to federal government pandemic spending — should not drive talk of income tax elimination. Increased revenue should be used to help Mississippi’s ailing education, health care and infrastructure and should be driving talk of raising the minimum wage, passing a state equal gender pay law and Medicaid expansion.
“A budget surplus indicates the state has more money than anticipated,” Roby said. “It does not mean it has more than it needs.”
But Russ Latino, with the conservative Empower Mississippi group, said: “If it is not prudent to have the conversation about (tax cuts or elimination) now, when we are sitting on a $1 billion cushion, then it will never be prudent.
“We are in a pivotal place in this state,” Latino said.
