OurTupelo

Gov. Tate Reeves explained on Thursday that his office, not the independent attorney hired to take the case, used an “objective process” to select who would face charges in the state’s massive civil lawsuit that attempts to claw back millions in misspent welfare funds.

The stated process, with its many caveats, happened to exclude University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, which the head of the welfare department and its attorney had initially intended on suing.

Reeves, who has been accused of a political cover-up in recent days for firing the private attorney bringing the lawsuit, said the state limited its complaint to people and companies who received payments that a third-party forensic auditing firm labeled as “waste, fraud and abuse” in a narrow October 2021 report or who were the subject of criminal charges.

“We’ve got to have an objective process by which we determine who gets sued. Knowing that, we can add any party in the future,” Reeves said Thursday during a press gaggle at the Neshoba County Fair — his first public comments since he was accused of firing the attorney to protect USM Athletic Foundation and other politically connected players. “… The only exception in the suit that we currently have that was not listed in that ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ category that we have sued is Prevacus. And the reason for that is because at the time the lawsuit was filed, it was the subject of the criminal indictment from one of the co-conspirators.”

But like Prevacus, the pharmaceutical company backed by retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, payments to the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation were also the subject of a criminal indictment and plea. The governor’s office directed the welfare department to remove the USM athletic foundation, whose board includes several Reeves donors, from its initial civil complaint before it was filed.

Reeves’ statement also doesn’t jibe with the fact that forensic auditors found $12.4 million in “waste, fraud and abuse,” but the civil suit seeks to recoup $24 million it says the defendants diverted “from the statutory purposes of that program and squandered by and for their enrichment.”

Nevertheless, the state has, at least to this point, decided against using the civil lawsuit to explore one of the most egregious schemes in the scandal: the use of $5 million in welfare money to build a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi.

In fact, the welfare department Reeves oversees removed the attorney who crafted the case, former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, for doing just that. Reeves initially approved of his welfare director, Bob Anderson, hiring Pigott on a year-long contract, which ends July 31.

Another paradox in Reeves’ explanation about how they chose which people and purchases to target in the suit is that retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre wasn’t included in the forensic audit report or criminal charges, but he was named as a defendant in the civil litigation. 

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves says ousted welfare scandal lawyer had ‘political agenda,’ wanted media spotlight

Asked Thursday afternoon to clarify its process for selecting defendants, the governor’s office sent a statement saying, “It was decided at the time, based on the sheer amount of evidence surrounding Prevacus that was presented in the criminal indictment, that a limited exception would be made (for those entities and individuals connected to Prevacus) to the general policy of sticking to “fraud, waste, and abuse” as identified by the forensic audit. There were many other entities that were questioned and/or included in the indictments that may be added in the future.”

The lawsuit doesn’t limit its probe into Favre to the Prevacus deal; it also includes $1.1 million in welfare money he received for public appearances officials say he never gave – an expenditure never described in the “waste, fraud and abuse” report Reeves referenced.

Favre had been seeking funding from the state of Mississippi to prop up Prevacus. Just weeks after Favre and Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham first offered Gov. Phil Bryant stock in the company to get him “on the team” in late 2018, they began receiving stolen welfare funds for their experimental drug projects that eventually totaled more than $2 million. Text messages uncovered by Mississippi Today showed Bryant agreed to accept a company package two days after leaving office, but arrests caused him to back out of the deal.

“We also took into account sensitivities regarding the ongoing criminal investigations that would be improper to opine upon further,” the governor’s statement continued.

Forensic auditors also noted in reports that they were limited in what they could review, preventing them from making determinations in its “waste, fraud and abuse” report about roughly $40 million in spending from nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, including payments to the athletic foundation and Favre.

“There are certain entities that are in question that the forensic auditor opined that they didn’t have enough information to determine if it was waste, fraud and abuse or not,” Reeves said Thursday. “And the reason they didn’t have enough information to determine that is because some entities, for example MCEC, because of the criminal case, were unwilling to cooperate with the forensic audit. So, there are a lot of entities that are not in the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ that can be added in the future. This is the reason, by the way, that most of the time in situations such as this the civil case comes after the criminal case.”

The forensic auditors noted that they were limited in whose emails they could review and also unable to retrieve documents not just from Mississippi Community Education Center, but also from the State Auditor’s Office, which as the initial investigating agency possessed many of the pertinent documents. 

Some defendants in the civil suit have requested a stay in the case to allow the criminal proceedings to wrap up before continuing the civil proceedings.

“The New Defendants have taken responsibility for their roles, yet they continue to be thrust into the crossfire by powerful forces fighting over political futures and tens of millions of dollars. The State wants to avoid liability and embarrassment, the Feds want their money back, and the public wants answers,” New’s attorney Gerry Bufkin wrote in a motion to stay on behalf of the New nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.

The hearing for this motion is set for August 17, and based on Reeves comments, it appears the state may be in support of this route.

Several other entities that received funds categorized as waste, fraud and abuse – such as Through the Fire Ministries, a Christian organization founded by a musician Deborah Bryant favored – were not included in the civil suit. The ministry received $25,000. The other entities named in the forensic audit report that were omitted from the lawsuit received under $25,000. 

The Warren, Washington, Issaquena, Sharkey Community Action Agency (WWISCAA), a defendant in the civil suit, was sued for as little as $49,190.

Lobaki Inc., another company that criminal defendants have admitted to defrauding the government in order to lavish with hundreds of thousands of welfare dollars, is also omitted from the civil suit. 

MDHS initially announced shortly after receiving the forensic audit that the agency would be suing both the athletic foundation and Lobaki – but then the governor’s office instituted its “objective process.”

When Pigott started seeking information about the volleyball scheme, the largest known purchase within the $77 million welfare scandal, the state abruptly removed him from the case. 

The volleyball project began in 2017 when Favre began seeking support for a new athletic facility at his alma mater, where his daughter played volleyball. He had the ear of Bryant and welfare officials John Davis, then-director of MDHS, and Nancy New, operator of a nonprofit that had started receiving a windfall of federal grant funds from the department.

The federal government prohibits states from using this money, a block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, on brick and mortar, so officials devised a scheme to conceal the true nature of the payment by calling it a lease. The nonprofit pretended that the $5 million lease with the athletic foundation would enable it to provide services to needy people. Nancy New’s son Zach New pleaded guilty to fraud over this scheme. The deal was signed off on by Institutes of Higher Learning and the Attorney General’s Office, according to IHL board meeting minutes.

A separate report from the same forensic auditors described the $5 million payment from Mississippi Community Education Center to the USM athletic foundation as unallowed under federal rules.

To explore all involved, Pigott subpoenaed the athletic foundation for its communication with several key people, including Bryant, his wife Deborah Bryant, and Favre. At the same time, Pigott also subpoenaed conservative radio station Supertalk for its interviews with key defendants in the case who often appeared on the show to tout their work.

The administration didn’t like the direction Pigott was taking.

“There seemed to be a pattern by the lawyer that DHS originally hired to want to move beyond those that were in that (waste, fraud and abuse) category for purposes of this litigation,” Reeves said. “It was almost as if there was a political agenda from this particular lawyer.”

As for the volleyball scheme itself – which could send Zach New to prison – Reeves equivocated on the legality of the expenditure.

“…while they may not have been wise expenditures, or they may not have been expenditures that I would have approved, the question is were they legal, or were they waste, fraud, and abuse. If they were waste fraud and abuse, then we filed suit,” Reeves said. “…I don’t know all the details as to how that (volleyball stadium) came about, what I do know is that it doesn’t seem like an expense that I would personally support for TANF dollars.”

The post Gov. Reeves justifies omitting volleyball stadium from welfare lawsuit, equivocates on legality of expenditure appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Horsepower appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A federal receiver will be appointed to manage the Hinds County jail, a federal judge ruled Friday. 

U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves wrote officials have received multiple chances to fix the Raymond jail, but they have been unable to. The court will appoint a receiver by Nov. 1. 

“We can’t wait for continued destruction of the facilities,” Reeves wrote in his 26-page order. “We can’t wait for the proliferation of more contraband. We can’t wait for more assaults. We can’t wait for another death. The time to act is now. There is no other choice, unfortunately.” 

Receivership, a form of intervention by the federal court to take an institution out of the hands of local or state management, was an option considered during three weeks of hearings at the federal courthouse in Jackson earlier this year. Hernandez Stroud, counsel for the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said receivership for county jails is uncommon, the Clarion Ledger reported. 

The decision to appoint a receiver comes years after the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the jail and settled with the county to come up with a consent decree, whose goal was to help Hinds County address unconstitutional issues at the jail.  

Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Credell Calhoun said Friday the county will work with its attorneys to come up with an action plan about receivership. 

The county and U.S. Department of Justice can submit ideas for powers and duties of the receiver, but ultimately what the receiver can do will be up to the court. 

Calhoun said despite the decision, current members of the board have made progress at the jail, including making plans to build a new one. 

“We’ve done a lot to improve the facility since this board was sworn in, and we think we’ve made a lot of progress in the jail,” he said. 

In his order, Reeves said the county has spent millions of dollars on the jail, but that hasn’t fixed conditions. He also said building a new jail won’t fix unconstitutional issues occurring now.

In April, Reeves issued an injunction to scale back the county’s consent decree. During a press conference at the time, Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said the lifted decree was “a step in the right direction.”

By May, the county indicated that it planned to appeal. 

Attorneys for the county filed a motion for reconsideration for a March contempt order Reeves filed against officials for failing to fix problems at the jail, which Reeves denied in his Friday order. 

A July 19 hearing was a last chance for the county to offer evidence that jail conditions were being addressed, Reeves said. Testimony and evidence showed a risk of harm remains at the Hinds County Detention Center, he wrote. 

A team of court appointed monitors have visited the jail since 2016 and offered ways to help the county comply with the consent decree. Reeves said the monitoring team will stop its work once a receiver is appointed. 

“After ample time and opportunity, regretfully, it is clear that the County is incapable, or unwilling, to handle its affairs,” Reeves wrote in his Friday order. “The County’s motion for reconsideration is denied. Additional intervention is required. It is time to appoint a receiver.”

Reeves offered two other extreme, less likely alternatives to receivership: the release of jail detainees into the public and closure of the jail. The other was to require the Hinds County Board of Supervisors and sheriff to spend at least a week detained in the jail to experience what life is like there.

“Experiencing life at the jail firsthand would surely motivate the County’s leaders to correct unconstitutional conditions therein. But this also seems an extreme remedy—at least, at
present,” he wrote.

Read the full ruling here:

The post ‘We can’t wait for another death’: Judge rules receiver will be appointed to manage Hinds County jail appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Through the eyes of Richard Etheridge, we travel the precarious path of his life in David Wright Faladé’s novel, “Black Cloud Rising.” It’s a fictional tale, interwoven with true-life events. 

Etheridge was a real person, a member of the African Brigade, fighting in the Civil War. His strength carries him and those like him on their journey to be free from bondage in a land where they know they are necessary, but not wanted; declared free, but not truly.

Etheridge, called “Dick” by all those who know him, was born a slave on Roanoke Island, the son of a slave mother and their owner. He is taught to read and write by his half-sister, his owner’s abolitionist daughter. 

His memories of being an “almost” member of his white owner’s family compared to his Freedman status as a fighting man leave him torn in his feelings of being conditioned to feeling he is a nobody to becoming and believing he is a somebody. 

Etheridge sees and feels this as he eventually attains the rank of sergeant. The validity of the brigade’s existence is a constant specter. Black men in Union blue, Black men fighting and killing white men, Black men free; juxtaposed against duty to country, family, and oneself. He was a naive 21-year-old when he joined the brigade, their mission — track down Confederate guerrillas in the fall 1863. 

Many brigade members like Etheridge fight on the very land where they were once enslaved, battling not only their own conditioned questioning of place as they face off against their former owners, and their sons and brothers, but the morality of it. A morality he comes face to face with on the battlefield, eye to eye with his own half-brother, who once told him he was “just like family.” 

“Just like family? We are family!” is Etheridge’s reply. He knows deep in his soul too, that freedom is the rallying cry at any cost.

The book’s title, “Black Cloud Rising,” derives from a song of the era, sung about Black Union troops like Etheridge and his brigade comrades. Their leader is a ginger bearded abolitionist named Edward Wild. “Wild” in his eyes and carriage, he’s a General and John Brown type, a force to be reckoned with, who frees all slaves he, Etheridge, and the African Brigade encounter as they fight their way to securing the North Carolina coastal region and its backwaters. Etheridge and the others in the brigade respect and love him for it.

The brigade is glorious to the enslaved who lay eyes upon them and despised by the white Southerners who loathe and fear them. “When this country is retaken, you ni**ers who’ve betrayed it will not fare well,” Etheridge is admonished by his general’s chastised brother. 

“I suspect you are right. Still, I’ll take my chances on freedom,” is Etheridge’s reply.

Faladé brings Etheridge’s “chance on freedom” to life in an arduous, frightening, and bloody journey to freedom; a tale of long ago and seldom talked about. 

Faladé is a featured panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 20.

READ MORE: In ‘The Movement Made Us,’ father and son reflect on the past, both remembered and forgotten

The post ‘Black Cloud Rising’ tells a harrowing tale of a formerly enslaved man’s fight for freedom appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Editor’s note: On Saturday night, July 30, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2022. What follows is the final part of a series detailing the achievements of the eight inductees, today featuring high school football coaching legend Willis Wright.

Perhaps it will some day be the epitaph on Willis Wright’s tombstone: “Here lies the man who created the University of South Panola.”

Wright, who should be in the first sentence of any discussion about “Mississippi’s greatest ever high school football coach,” will be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Saturday night — despite his contention he doesn’t belong.

“I got no business going into that Hall of Fame with those legends,” Wright, 76, said Wednesday. “I’ll just be honest with you. I feel unworthy of this honor. I appreciate it, but I feel unworthy.”

Wright is worthy. It’s not just that as a head coach his teams at eight different schools won nearly 80% of their games. It’s not just that he created the monster at South Panola. It’s not just that one of his schools (Saltillo) thought so much of him, they named the stadium after him. It’s not just that he was a coach on nine state championship teams. And it’s not just that he is widely liked and respected by his peers. It’s all that — and lots more.

Mike Justice, who also belongs in that “Mississippi’s greatest high school coach discussion,” puts it this way: “You can’t have that greatest coach discussion without Willis. He won at all different levels, little schools and big schools, public schools and private schools, Mississippi and Alabama. He won at eight different places. And I’ll tell you this much about him: Of all the great coaches who have come through Mississippi, Willis has the least amount of ego. Most really successful coaches have a huge ego. Willis has none.”

Justice speaks the truth. In fact, no telling how many games Wright would have won if he had remained a head coach throughout his career. He did not. In high school football, the head coach gets all the headlines. Wright didn’t care. In fact, Wright returned to South Panola at the end of his career and served two different head coaches as the defensive coordinator. Those South Panola teams, head-coached by Ricky Woods and Lance Pogue, won 75 games and lost one. You read right: 75-1.

“Yes sir, we had a run there,” Wright said. “Any coach who was a part of it will tell you, we had some out-of-this-world athletes.”

The stories are legion about the speed and power of those South Panola teams. And about how when the coaches showed up at the crack of dawn most summer mornings, the players were already waiting at the field house doors, ready to lift weights and run to get stronger and faster when they already were the strongest and fastest. Wright created that atmosphere as head coach in the early 1990s. He left South Panola in 1993 after his team finished 15-0 and out-scored opponents by an average of 30 points per game. He returned as a defensive coordinator in 2001 for six seasons, during which the South Panola Tigers were nearly always ranked among the top 10 high school teams in the USA.

“To tell you the truth, I enjoyed that more,” Wright said of his days as a defensive coordinator. “That allowed me to just coach without all the other headaches a head coach has. I didn’t sleep much as a head coach, to tell you the truth. I was too intense. The part of coaching I really enjoyed was interacting with the kids, watching tape, coming up with a plan. I loved all that – just loved it.”

Wright’s last season in coaching was Pogue’s first as head coach at South Panola. Naturally, the Tigers finished 15-0 and won the state title.

“First of all, Willis had a big hand in hiring me there,” Pogue said. “Then, he agreed to stay on and help me that first season. I saw it first-hand. He had a unique ability to motivate kids in a quiet, humble way. When you get right down to it, he created the whole South Panola thing and then helped sustain it. Even after he retired, he was still a big part of it.”

Once, when this writer was covering a South Panola game during Wright’s time as defensive coordinator, he coached the entire game with a fishing lure hanging out of the pocket of his shirt.

Asked about it afterward, Wright looked down sheepishly to see the lure and said he had come straight from the lake to the football game and had forgotten about the lure. 

Said Pogue, “Willis told me one time he was passionate about three things: crappie fishing, eating and coaching football. I’m here to tell you he was really, really good at all three.”

Wright grew up in Winona, where he well remembers watching Winona native and future Mississippi State and NFL star Billy Stacy play high school football. “Man, there was nothing that Billy Stacy couldn’t do,” Wright said. “He was my hero, and I was hooked on high school football.”

Wright later played for Winona and earned a football scholarship to Holmes Community College. But his father died about that time, “and I had Daddy’s cows to take care of,” he said. “There wasn’t time to play football.”

Still, he completed the two years of junior college at Holmes and then two years at Delta State, majoring in physical education. “I knew I wanted to coach and I knew I wanted to coach high school football,” he said.

And so he did. In the early 1980s, when he was winning state championships at Starkville, Wright was approached by Emory Bellard about joining his staff at Mississippi State. That never happened. Said Wright, “I think I knew down deep that I was a high school coach. I was just smart enough to realize I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing.”

Yes, and few, if any, have ever done it better.

•••

Part I: Maggie Bowen-Hanna.

Part II: Eric Moulds.

Part III: Jim Gallagher.

Part IV: Bob Tyler.

Part V: Barry Lyons

Part VI: David Dellucci

Part VII: Kermit Davis Sr.

For MSHOF Induction Weekend event and ticket information, click here. 

The post With no ego at all, Willis Wright created the University of South Panola appeared first on Mississippi Today.

One of the greatest parts of the Neshoba County Fair is eating lunch with friends in their cabin. This year’s fair speeches, which were tepid because of a slow political year, served little substance but plenty of red meat and a tater.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Lunch Menu appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi is suing several top University of Mississippi Medical Center employees, alleging defamation and civil conspiracy over the public relations campaign the hospital has been waging against the insurer due to their contract dispute. 

Blue Cross filed a lawsuit in Rankin County’s circuit court on Thursday against UMMC employees LouAnn Woodward, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine, Alan Jones, Associate Vice Chancellor for Clinical Affairs, Marc Rolph, Executive Director of Communications and Marketing, and other unnamed UMMC employees.

Rolph declined to comment on the lawsuit.

UMMC itself is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit because state law grants UMMC immunity for defamation committed by its employees. 

UMMC has been out of network with Blue Cross, the state’s largest insurer, since April 1 due to disagreements over reimbursement rates and Blue Cross’ quality care plan. Since then, UMMC has spent nearly $279,000 on digital ads, commercials and billboards attacking the insurer.

In the lawsuit, Blue Cross alleges that the public relations campaign was “designed to disseminate false and defamatory statements about Blue Cross to the public.”

Blue Cross’ major issue with the campaign’s advertisements and various public statements the defendant’s have made is that they allege Blue Cross ended its contract with UMMC and the insurer has “excluded” UMMC from its network of providers as a result. Since UMMC voluntarily ended its contracts with Blue Cross, the insurer claims UMMC’s campaign is defamatory and has harmed its reputation and business.

Blue Cross has continued to offer network level reimbursement rates for its customers that seek care at UMMC, but the hospital has refused to accept those payments. Due to this refusal and UMMC being the party that ended their relationship, Blue Cross says it is UMMC who is preventing the insurer’s customers from receiving care at the medical center. 

The insurer also claims in the lawsuit that other public comments UMMC officials have made related to the contract dispute are false. One such claim is that Blue Cross has not increased its reimbursement rates to UMMC since 2018. While UMMC claims the only increase it has received in recent years is a 1% increase in 2018, Blue Cross claims it has increased reimbursement rates every year since then. Since all financial agreements between the two parties are confidential, Mississippi Today is unable to verify the claims of either party on this issue.

Another claim Blue Cross says is false is that UMMC was not responsible for removing transplant patients insured by Blue Cross from their transplant lists. 

According to Blue Cross, a transplant patient was scheduled to have their surgery during this grace period, but the hospital canceled the procedure. In another instance, the parents of a pediatric transplant patient were advised to seek their child’s care out-of-state. Both patients eventually received that surgery “only after Blue Cross vigorously challenged UMMC’s actions.” The insurer claims that other instances like these have occurred.

Mississippi Today has previously reported on transplant patients who have been forced to seek their care out-of-state. Others have been unable to get estimates of how much their surgeries would cost from UMMC or Blue Cross as required by federal law.

Blue Cross is seeking an injunction against the continued publication and dissemination of the statements it considers defamatory as well as monetary damages from each of the defendants. 

Read the full complaint here:

Editor’s note: UMMC, through an ad agency, has placed paid advertisements about the BCBS dispute on Mississippi Today’s website. Advertisers have no input in the editorial process.

The post Blue Cross sues top UMMC officials over PR campaign appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi education leaders are largely planning to continue using their COVID policies from last school year, but some have dropped protections altogether. 

Schools have been required to offer in-person learning as their primary method of instruction since the start of last school year. Local school boards are allowed to develop their own specific policies regarding virtual options, but are required to ensure that students receive direct instruction from a teacher for the same number of minutes each day that they would in-person. Any other decisions regarding masking, quarantining, sanitation, and vaccination have been made by districts at the local level for the last year. 

The new school year begins as, COVID-19 cases are rising in Mississippi, with 1,705 positive cases on July 27 compared to 105 at the beginning of May. While high, they have not yet climbed to the levels seen during the delta and omicron waves. The Mississippi State Department of Health recently announced that families can receive eight rapid tests each month through their county health department.

Policies vary from district to district, but most appear to be relaxing or maintaining relaxed COVID safety protocols for the upcoming school year, which begins for most districts in early August.

Greg Ellis, spokesperson for the Tupelo School District, said the district is generally continuing to follow its 2021-2022 plan but has added cameras in classrooms so that students who are quarantining due to positivity or exposure can continue to participate remotely in instruction. The district’s quarantine policies say they follow CDC and MSDH guidance. 

The Greenville School District is also maintaining its 2021-2022 policies, but it requires all students, staff, and visitors to wear masks, as well as temperature checks and socially distanced seating. 

By contrast, the Jackson Public School District has dropped its mask mandate and vaccine mandate for employees but will continue contact tracing and sanitation efforts.

“COVID-19 seems to be another sickness we’re just going to have to deal with for the rest of our lives,” said Gulfport Superintendent Glen East. He elaborated that the district will require a doctor’s note to return to school. 

The DeSoto County School District is also mostly returning to pre-pandemic norms, including regarding campus events and school lunch prices. Their plan instructs parents to contact the school nurse for instructions regarding the length of quarantine, and the district clarified that absences due to COVID are still excused.

The Lauderdale County and Vicksburg-Warren School Districts have not made any substantial changes to their plans, which do not require masking and say students should quarantine if they are exhibiting symptoms. 

State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said MSDH will no longer be requiring weekly reporting from schools of positive cases or quarantined students as they “transition to more routine, sustainable surveillance.” Generally, the MSDH recommends that masks should be worn when community transmission is high, encourages parents to review Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, and can provide testing and vaccination support to districts. 

Dr. Anita Henderson, president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that vaccinations are going to be the most effective way of slowing down transmission and encouraged parents to get their children vaccinated, as well as staff to get boosted if they are eligible. Children ages 6 months and older are also now eligible for vaccines, which can be scheduled through MSDH.

She also encouraged families to pick up at-home tests and double-check before attending group events, visiting immunocompromised family, or if they are showing any cold symptoms. 

“We are very concerned, just like when school started back last year and we saw that huge surge of delta in the fall,” Henderson said. “We’re already in the middle of a big omicron surge now, and we’re concerned that it’s going to also happen in schools. We already know that school teachers are out in our area, we know children who have tested positive have missed their first week of school … These are things that are going to continue to happen unless we do everything we can to slow down transmission in schools.” 

Mississippi Today intern Allison Santa-Cruz contributed to this reporting. 

The post Schools will maintain relaxed COVID policies for new school year appeared first on Mississippi Today.

NESHOBA COUNTY FAIR — Gov. Tate Reeves and attorney Brad Pigott agree on one thing: that Pigott was dismissed from overseeing the state’s lawsuit to recoup millions of dollars stolen or misspent in the Mississippi welfare fraud scandal because of politics.

Pigott said it was because he was looking into the roles of former Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, the USM Athletic Foundation and other powerful and connected people or entities Reeves and others didn’t want him looking at.

Reeves on Thursday said he signed off on firing Pigott because the attorney wasn’t up to the task, had a “political agenda” and wanted to be in the media spotlight.

“I think the way in which (Pigott) … has acted since they chose not to renew his contract shows exactly why many of us were concerned about the way in which he conducted himself in the year in which he was employed,” Reeves said at the Neshoba County Fair. “He seemed much more focused on the political side of things. He seemed much more interested in getting his name in print and hopefully bigger and bigger print, not just Mississippi stories. He wants this to go national, wants to talk to the press.”

Reeves’ welfare director initially said Pigott was dismissed in part because officials were blindsided by Pigott’s subpoena of the USM foundation communication. But emails obtained by Mississippi Today showed the agency and the state AG’s office were given drafts of the subpoena 10 days before he filed it.

READ MORE: Welfare head says surprise subpoena led to attorney’s firing. Emails show it wasn’t a surprise.

Pigott is a former federal prosecutor who was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi by former President Bill Clinton. As a prosecutor, Pigott led cases that took down the Dixie Mafia organized crime syndicate in Mississippi. In 2021, Pigott came out of retirement to lead the Mississippi Department of Human Services’ civil lawsuit seeking to recover a portion of the $77 million in stolen, misspent or unaccounted federal welfare dollars.

There are also state and federal criminal investigations pending in the case.

Pigott was fired a week after he filed subpoenas on the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation over $5 million in welfare dollars spent on a volleyball stadium. Pigott was seeking communications between the USM foundation, Bryant, Bryant’s wife, Deborah, and former NFL star Brett Favre involving the stadium.

Pigott declined comment on Reeves’ statements Thursday. But he has said he was fired on orders from Reeves to protect the USM Athletic Foundation. The foundation is comprised of many business and political leaders, including many large donors to Reeves’ campaign coffers. And repaying the welfare money spent on the volleyball stadium would be a big blow to USM athletics.

Reeves said the USM foundation or others might eventually be named in the state’s lawsuit, but that Pigott got out over his skis with the subpoenas. He said the state is focused primarily on suing to recover funds specifically tagged as fraud, waste or abuse by a forensic audit firm the state hired.

That audit firm noted in its reports to the state that it might have identified more fraud, waste and abuse if it had not been limited in what and who it could examine in its probe.

Reeves said that typically, civil lawsuits to claw back stolen money come after criminal investigation and prosecution is concluded. But he said criminal investigations are ongoing by the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, Health and Human Services fraud investigators and others. Reeves said that, as for the state’s lawsuit to claw back money, if more fraud by more entities is uncovered, “they will be sued at the proper time,” and that Pigott’s dismissal will not affect that.

“The Department of Justice has 100,000 people working for them,” Reeves said. “Do you actually think that one lawyer (Pigott) who is a sole practitioner that is semi-retired will thwart the investigation here? They are totally and completely separate, and any accusation otherwise is all about getting clicks on the internet and not finding out the truth. My job as governor is to make sure taxpayers are protected. What the attorney in question here has proven is that he is interested not in what’s best for the state, but in getting his name in print or on the computer.”

State Auditor Shad White’s office first discovered welfare misspending and brought the first charges in the case more than two years ago. On Thursday at the Neshoba Fair, White reiterated his take that firing Pigott was a mistake that could shake the public’s confidence that the case is being thoroughly investigated and all responsible will be held accountable.

White, a former staffer and campaign manager for Bryant, has faced his own questions about his ties to the former governor and whether he would thoroughly investigate his former boss.

“What I said was that I think firing (Pigott) was a mistake,” White said. “From the very beginning of the DHS case, my position was that it is important to have a bipartisan group look at the case, and a variety of prosecutors and law enforcement entities, because we need to give the public confidence we are getting to the bottom of the case and looking at every single charge available and every single person. That’s one of many reasons I took the case initially to Hinds County DA Jody Owens, a Democrat.”

“My whole mission right now is to do my job well, fully investigate this and work with the FBI,” White said. “We have been working with them every single day. I’ve been on the phone again with them this week.”

White said he thinks Pigott’s subpoenas for USM foundation, Phil Bryant and other communications “makes sense,” and he said he will make sure his investigators and the FBI have any such documents and communications for their investigations.

As for potential involvement of his former boss Bryant — issues raised by text messages obtained by Mississippi Today — White said: “I’ve made very plain from the very beginning, we are going to do our job in this case and it doesn’t matter who you are talking about whether Brett Favre or the janitor down at DHS, we are going to do our jobs on this case and that’s what I’m focused on.”

White said, “I was sick to my stomach every time we would look at something that showed that money was misspent in a different way.”

White said his office uncovered all the aspects of the case that are still the center of attention and said in his speech at the fair that he won’t pull punches on the politically connected or celebrities.

The post Gov. Tate Reeves says ousted welfare scandal lawyer had ‘political agenda,’ wanted media spotlight appeared first on Mississippi Today.

NESHOBA COUNTY FAIR — Attorney General Lynn Fitch told Neshoba County fairgoers that God chose a Mississippi case to be the catalyst to overturn the national right to an abortion.

“God selected us,” Fitch said on Thursday, referring to the Supreme Court decision in late June overturning Roe v. Wade. “We were chosen to go before the United States Supreme Court.

“God selected the Mississippi case. God put us in this position.”

Numerous politicians on Thursday during the second day of the political speakings on a hot and humid day at the historic Neshoba County Fair evoked God, particularly as it related to the Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That landmark case, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court by Fitch’s office, led to the overturning of a national right to an abortion. Fitch received a rousing ovation at the end of her speech under the tin-roof Founders Square Pavilion.

Fitch and multiple other statewide officials who spoke at the Neshoba County Fair said their next focus is to ensure the mothers and children impacted by the reversal of Roe v. Wade have the support they need.

But they offered few specifics. Even before the reversal of Roe, the state already had the nation’s highest infant mortality rate and the most children per capita living in poverty.

Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn pointed out that the Legislature provided $3.5 million in tax credits to help support 37 pregnancy crisis centers across the state. Both Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, have formed or will form special committees to further study the issue. They have referenced continuing efforts to improve the state’s long-beleaguered foster care system and said changes in law are needed to make adoptions easier.

But other than Hosemann, no officeholder has endorsed any specific policy that would accomplish the shared goal of helping mothers and children. Earlier this year, Hosemann was among several Senate Republicans who supported extending Medicaid coverage for one year for mothers after giving birth. According to Reeves, 70% of all women giving birth in Mississippi are on Medicaid, but under state law that coverage only lasts 60 days.

When asked about whether the state should expand postpartum coverage on Thursday, Fitch at first mistakenly responded that she couldn’t talk about the issue because it was “pending litigation.” After it was pointed out that no pending litigation existed on the topic, she then said her office would not push for the policy change, but would uphold whatever law may be passed in the future by lawmakers.

House Speaker Philip Gunn said he would consider providing postpartum coverage if the Division of Medicaid, overseen by Reeves, said it was needed.

Reeves did not answer when asked after his fiery speech whether he would support expanding postpartum coverage.

READ MORE: Doctors asked Speaker Philip Gunn to extend health coverage for moms and babies. Then he blocked it.

Andy Gipson, the commissioner of Department of Agriculture and Commerce, previously served in the state House and played a key role in passing the law that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

When asked after his speech whether he would support an expansion of postpartum coverage, Gipson said he supported private insurance. When it was pointed out that Mississippi had the nation’s highest infant mortality rate, Gipson’s wife, Leslie, who was listening, offered the possibility of a correlation between the high infant mortality rate and the state’s vaccine mandates for infants.

“It is worth looking at,” Gipson concurred, declining to cite any scientific data that suggests such a correlation exists. Gipson, who said he intends to run for re-election, touted what he said was the state’s conservative principles.

Gipson, Gunn and Reeves spoke of national Democrats trying to replace God with their liberal agenda.

“We will never stop fighting for our traditional values,” Reeves said. “We will never stop fighting for our way of life.”

Reeves said national liberal Democrats are working to “have drag shows and teach critical race theory” in the public schools. He was referencing the efforts on the national level to ensure people with different sexual identities or orientations are not discriminated against and of efforts in some schools to teach the impact racism has had on the history of the country.

Among the accomplishments that Gunn cited for the House under his Republican leadership was legislation enacted into law to give businesses the right not to serve same sex couples based on religious principles.

They also took aim at people who they claimed were not working and were receiving taxpayer dollars.

“We believe all able-bodied folks ought to get off the couch and go to work,” Gipson said to rousing applause. He said taxpayers should not subsidize people who will not work.

“This is why we oppose Medicaid expansion,” said Gipson, ignoring studies that indicate most of the people who receive health care coverage — and no cash benefits — from Medicaid expansion are the working poor.

Of course, those nuances were not addressed Thursday at the Neshoba County Fair, where both the political speeches and the weather were hot.

READ MORE: After lawmakers go home without extending postpartum Medicaid, six moms speak out

The post GOP politicians embrace God but shun Medicaid postpartum coverage at Neshoba appeared first on Mississippi Today.