OurTupelo

Madison Rux didn’t have much hope that Congressman Steven Palazzo could help her, so she wasn’t terribly surprised when he didn’t.

For weeks, the Petal mother had been scouring Facebook groups and driving from store to store, trying to find formula for her now 7-month-old son.

When she saw a friend explain on Facebook that contacting Palazzo’s office had resulted in a free expedited shipment of formula, she decided to give it a try. But her expectations were low. 

“In the back of my mind I was like, ‘What is he gonna do?’” Rux said. “With all these mothers that are struggling to find formula, what is he gonna do about it?”

On May 10, Palazzo posted on Facebook that people having trouble finding baby formula should contact his office “so we can assist you as best we can.” It did not include contact information.

“Ensuring each new life is well fed and taken care of is crucial during this national shortage,” he wrote. The post was shared about 3,000 times. 

Another Palazzo post on May 18 touted “the successes we’ve had so far” in helping people who had reached out to his office for help finding formula, including two testimonies from people thanking his office for their help and adding a phone number to call. 

But for Rux and other parents, calling the congressman’s office was another fruitless detour on what has become a constant quest to find the formula she needs to keep her baby alive. It also highlighted the limited efficacy of Palazzo’s pledge to help constituents, even as he missed two votes on the issue last week and continues to criticize the administration of President Joe Biden over the formula shortage. 

Rather than providing formula, caseworkers have been sending callers links to online store locators — which many desperate parents are already using — and sharing contact information for formula manufacturers.

On Monday, Palazzo’s office told Mississippi Today that they had put 103 people in touch with formula makers, and confirmed that four of them had actually received formula. It’s possible that others also got formula but didn’t tell the office. 

Rux called the office on Friday and said she needed an Enfamil formula manufactured by Reckitt — as a recipient of federal WIC (the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) benefits in Mississippi, she can only buy Enfamil products unless her baby’s pediatrician says he needs something different. Palazzo’s caseworker took down her information and she got an email on May 20. 

“It was a paragraph from Reckitt that they were just forwarding,” Rux said. “They had their header on it to make it look professional, I guess. ‘Here’s a link to check the stores. Have a good day.’ I was like, oh, thanks. Thanks, that’s helpful.” 

It appears that most people who use WIC to purchase their baby’s formula were out of luck if they contacted the congressman. Palazzo’s office said the four confirmed recipients had requested a brand made by Abbott Laboratories, which produces Similac. Anyone who requested a Reckitt brand, like Rux, got a link to a store locator. 

As of 2021, about 72,000 Mississippians were enrolled in WIC. A household of three must make about $41,000 or less annually to qualify. 

“Thank you for the information, unfortunately everyone within a 50 mile radius (is out) of formula right now,” Rux replied to the email she got from Palazzo. “I’ve been calling all the stores and everyone is currently out of the Gentlease formula, even on the Enfamil website and we’re down to two cans which will last almost a week. Because we’re on WIC we can’t afford to order the $50 container online. Is there anything else that we could do? Thank you so much for your help!”

She got a call back from a staffer who suggested she continue calling stores and asking around — which is also what she has heard from the WIC office when she asks for help. Her son has a pediatrician appointment on Friday and Rux hopes he’ll have advice or even formula to share. 

At least a handful of Mississippians found that Palazzo’s office did help them get formula. 

Lacee Ard, the friend whose Facebook post inspired Rux to try calling Palazzo, contacted them on May 18, seeking help getting the Abbott-manufactured formula brand her three-month-old son needs. She got an email back that same day, saying they had forwarded her information to Abbott and that the company would call her directly. The next day, she got a call from someone at Abbott. The company sent her a free case of formula that she estimates will last her for weeks. It arrived at her Jones County home on Monday. 

Ard posted on Facebook Live to talk about the experience, in the hopes that other Mississippi parents might be able to get help. The formula shortage ought to be considered a national emergency, she said.

“All these babies, they’ve gotta eat,” she said. “It’s a terrifying time for mothers in general. To see someone in that position made that post and made himself available to talk or send an email and express his concerns — I was just so thankful to see that (Palazzo) had done that because I haven’t seen anyone else do that.”

Palazzo and other Republicans have blamed President Joe Biden for the shortage. The congressman missed two votes last week on legislation aiming to address the issue. He was attending his daughter’s high school graduation, his office told Mississippi Today.

According to the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica, Palazzo has missed 4.3% of votes during this congressional term, making him the 41st-most-absent member of Congress. Rep. Michael Guest has missed about 10% of votes and is the ninth-most-absent. Rep. Bennie Thompson and Rep. Trent Kelly rarely miss votes, according to ProPublica.

Palazzo also joined other congressional Republicans in filing a 2020 lawsuit against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to stop proxy voting — the process by which members have other congressmen cast votes for them when they are absent. Since then, he has voted by proxy at least 66 times. Guest and Kelly have never voted by proxy in the same time frame.

One bill, to provide $28 million in funding to the Food and Drug Administration, passed in a mainly party-line vote with little Republican support. Press secretary Megan Quinn said Palazzo would have opposed that bill, like the other members of the Mississippi Republican delegation, “because it is not a permanent nor fiscally sound solution.” 

The only member of the Mississippi congressional delegation to vote for the legislation was Thompson, a Democrat. In a statement, Thompson said he believed both bills would help get formula onto shelves.

The other bill, H.R. 7791, which would make it easier for the federal WIC program to buy formula from overseas, passed overwhelmingly with support from all voting members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation. Palazzo’s office said he would have also supported that bill.

Just four companies control about 90% of the infant formula market in the United States, thanks in part to regulations that limit imports. 

In mid-February, the Abbott factory in Michigan — the largest formula factory in the country — shut down production after its formula was linked to two infant deaths and the FDA found serious food safety violations at the plant. Months later, the plant is still closed, but Abbott plans to reopen it on June 4. Abbott has said it could take two months to get formula into stores after resuming production. 

With the formula market controlled by just a handful of companies operating a small number of plants, the Abbott outage and other supply chain issues have created a major shortage. According to one estimate, more than 40% of all baby formula was out of stock as of mid-May.

Across the state and country, parents and especially mothers have been trading tips and offering spare cans of formula in Facebook groups. Taylor Shahin, a mom of two in Ocean Springs, is breastfeeding her 9-month-old but remembers struggling to find formula for her toddler during the pandemic. She’s been trying to help other Coast moms find cans.

When she saw Palazzo’s post, she hoped it could make a difference. But she heard from other moms that they just received a 1-800 number to call a formula manufacturer. On Friday, she called Palazzo’s office to ask why he didn’t vote on the legislation. She said she was told he had a “family emergency.”

“I said, ‘Well, he chose to run for office and now Mississippi is also his family and I think that potentially hungry babies should take precedence,’” she said in an interview with Mississippi Today. “You make a Facebook post basically bribing desperate moms to think that you’re helping them get formula, when you’re just having your office give them 1-800 numbers and you can’t even show up to vote on a bill.”

Rux said she was glad that some people had benefited from Palazzo’s Facebook post. But for her, it had offered only a flash of false hope. 

On Sunday night, she opened her last can of formula. On Tuesday morning, she drove 90 minutes round-trip to meet up with a woman in Laurel who had wound up with an extra can to share. That supply would last about a week. Meanwhile, Rux planned to keep calling every store in an 80-mile radius.

“I’m really hoping that in that week, week and a half, some store will get something somewhere,” Rux said. 

Correction: This article previously misstated the number of times Reps. Guest and Kelly have voted by proxy. Neither has voted by proxy during the current congressional term.

The post Palazzo blamed Biden for the formula shortage. Then he missed two votes to address it. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

You didn’t think the Cleveland boys were going to let the Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher Wrestling Live on Channel Five-type war of words pass without comment, did you? Plus, a huge week of baseball tournaments will be challenged by seasonable Mississippi weather this week.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Nick vs. Jimbo, plus baseball galore appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A year-and-a-half long probe by the House Ethics Committee into alleged misspending of campaign and congressional money and misuse of his office by Rep. Steven Palazzo isn’t likely to yield results, said an attorney for the group that filed the initial complaint against the congressman.

Kedric Payne, vice president of the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group, said the House Ethics Committee has failed to create an investigative subcommittee on the Palazzo case and has instead classified it as a review. This, he said, makes it likely the complaint will “just sort of evaporate” when the 117th Congress ends on Jan. 3, with the committee neither clearing Palazzo nor taking any action against him.

“The chances are very low that this will be further investigated because the committee often just ends these (reviews) when the current congress officially ends,” Payne said. “… It is a very sad situation with congressional ethics that there’s not serious enforcement. It’s a problem that comes from self policing — these members have to hold themselves accountable, and that is inevitably going to lead to a lack of enforcement … but the Office of Congressional Ethics report (on Palazzo) is out there, and it at least gives voters information they need.”

A spokesman for Palazzo said the allegations were politically motivated and that Palazzo hopes the committee does follow through and clear his name.

“We have always wanted to get this in front of the actual Ethics Committee,” said Palazzo campaign spokesman Justin Brasell. “All of this from the beginning was political, created by Congressman Palazzo’s political opponents … We’ve long been ready to get this behind us and we fully believe it will be resolved in Congressman Palazzo’s favor.”

READ MORE: Rep. Steven Palazzo ethics investigation: Is the congressman’s campaign account a slush fund?

Palazzo, who has held the District 4 U.S. House seat since 2011, is up for reelection this year and faces a crowded field of challengers in the June 7 Republican primary. The alleged ethics violations have been a cloud over Palazzo after a challenger in his 2019 primary saw what he believed were irregularities in Palazzo’s campaign finance records and hired a private investigator. He then turned his findings over to the Campaign Legal Center, which filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The OCE report, made public early last year, claimed that Palazzo misspent campaign and congressional funds and said it found evidence he used his office to help his brother and used staff for personal errands and services. After its investigation, the OCE handed the matter off to the House Ethics Committee, which announced in mid-December of 2020 that it was looking into the allegations.

READ MORE: Ethics report: ‘Substantial’ evidence of Rep. Palazzo wrongdoing

The allegations in the OCE report included that Palazzo used campaign funds to pay himself and his erstwhile wife nearly $200,000 through companies they own, including thousands to cover the mortgage, maintenance and upgrades to a riverfront home Palazzo owned and wanted to sell. But Palazzo said that the payments were legally made for the campaign’s rent of the home for a campaign office.

The OCE report said it found “substantial” evidence that Palazzo improperly used his office to help his brother, Kyle Palazzo. The report said Kyle was prohibited from re-enlisting in the Navy and that Palazzo used his office and resources to contact the assistant secretary of the Navy to help his brother. The OCE also questioned the campaign paying Kyle Palazzo as a “political coordinator” and letting the brother use the campaign’s credit card for food, gas, hotel rooms and other goods and services.

Brasell said Palazzo’s office only offered Kyle assistance that it would any constituent, and that his paid work for the campaign was aboveboard.

The OCE report also claimed Palazzo had used congressional staffers for personal errands and campaign work. It said former staffers it interviewed said Palazzo’s office failed to separate official work from campaign and personal activities, including shopping for his kids. In 2011, during his first term in office, Palazzo had also faced allegations that he and his wife used congressional staffers for babysitting, chauffeuring kids around and moving.

A Mississippi Today report in 2020 also questioned thousands of dollars in Palazzo campaign spending on swanky restaurants, sporting events, resort hotels, golfing and gifts. Federal law and House rules prohibit using campaign money for personal expenses. The Palazzo campaign at the time said it had found a few mistaken, non-permissible purchases and the Palazzo had repaid the campaign.

Brasell said this week that Palazzo has reimbursed his campaign $10,821. He said it is common for campaigns to make such mistakes, and said Palazzo has hired a new accounting firm to handle his campaign finances.

The Campaign Legal Center has said that Palazzo, who makes $174,000 a year as a congressman, appeared to use his campaign account as a “personal slush fund.”

Since its announcement in 2020, House Ethics has said little about the Palazzo case, beyond a posted statement last year that it was treating it as a review, not forming an investigative subcommittee. A spokesman for the committee this week said there were no further updates.

READ MORE: Wiggins again misused state campaign funds for congressional race, complaint alleges

The post Ethics complaints against Rep. Steven Palazzo likely to ‘evaporate’ in Congress appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Thoughts and Prayers appeared first on Mississippi Today.

PASCAGOULA — Josh Church is usually just the messenger, but that doesn’t make him any more popular among city homeowners.

Church is a building official. And in post-Katrina Pascagoula that has meant years of informing homeowners federal rules meant to protect them won’t allow them to spend the needed funds to repair their homes or keep them up to code. 

The city cannot grant the needed building permits if a home or building’s repairs cost more than 50% of what the property is worth. But property values in Pascagoula have plummeted, city officials say, meaning that “50% rule” doesn’t stretch far. Many homes in Pascagoula, built in the 1940s and 50s, are now valued below $100,000.

“It’s literally making people homeless,” Church told Mississippi Today. 

Pascagoula has a growing number of deteriorating homes that wind up condemned, according to city leaders. So on Tuesday, Pascagoula’s mayor, economic development director and other city stakeholders launched a coalition demanding congress change the rules set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency they say have devastated Pascagoula’s housing market. 

“We have to get some relief,” Pascagoula Mayor Jay Willis said during the Tuesday press conference. “They’re slowly killing neighborhoods in Pascagoula.” 

In 2009, in response to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA put 90% of Pascagoula into expanded flood zones. Pascagoula leaders say before that shift only about 20% of the city was in flood zones. As a result, in the last 17 years the bulk of Pascagoula home values have dropped dramatically. 

“It’s not easy to tell someone that has lived in their house for 30 years that after a small fire, it’s going to cost 60% of their house value for repairs, so we can’t let them fix it,” Church said.

The FEMA rules are intended to protect people from investing in properties that are likely to flood again. City leaders say that in Pascagoula, homes aren’t in a high-degree of danger.

“These neighborhoods have only flooded one time in history and that was during Katrina,” Willis said. 

The coalition has support from state leaders – Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, former Gov. Haley Barbour and Rep. Steven Palazzo – and some of Mississippi’s largest businesses. 

Alan Sudduth, a corporate affairs manager for Chevron, took to the podium Tuesday to give the company’s support but also to point out his workers cannot find homes in Pascagoula. The same sentiments have been echoed by Mississippi Power. It’s common for Ingalls shipbuilders to live out-of-state. 

“Prior to Katrina, we had a healthy percentage of employees who lived in Pascagoula,” Sudduth said. “Since the application of these rules, it’s been a sharp decline.” 

Church said realtors are fielding calls regularly from people who want to live in Pascagoula, which has invested recently in building up its downtown. 

“But we don’t have many for sale because we cannot fix them,” Church said. 

The “50% rule” covers a 10-year span. In the case of a $100,000-valued home, the city cannot permit more than $50,000 in repairs over a decade – that includes everything from roofs, electrical issues to plumbing.

The coalition calls its campaign “S.O.S Pascagoula” with the slogan: “Don’t leave our neighborhoods behind.” 

The post Pascagoula leaders say FEMA rules are killing housing market: ‘It’s literally making people homeless’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi State Board of Health announced Wednesday morning that Dr. Daniel P. Edney will be the new State Health Officer of the Mississippi State Department of Health. He will step into the new role on Aug. 1.

Edney was named deputy state health officer in March after the Department announced that current State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs would be retiring at the end of July. Prior to that appointment, Edney served as chief medical officer and has worked closely with Dobbs on the agency’s COVID-19 response.

“Following in the footsteps of Dr. Dobbs, I, too, hope to serve as a catalyst for change – especially with infant and maternal mortality, the opioids battle plaguing the country right now, and moving the needle in preventive health and health equity issues,” Edney said in a press release. 

Edney, a native of Greenville, has practiced medicine in Vicksburg since 1991. He is a former president of the Mississippi State Medical Association and currently serves as a board member on the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure. He has also served as a fellow and laureate for the Mississippi Chapter of the American College of Physicians and a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Edney is a board-certified General Internist with subspecialty board certification in Addiction Medicine. He has a private practice at Medical Associates of Vicksburg and has served as the medical director for several local nursing homes and hospice services, as well as the addiction medicine physician for several mental health facilities.

In the announcement, Dobbs praised Edney as a major asset to the health department, especially during the COVID pandemic.

“Among his various contributions, Dr. Edney worked with various organizations and partnerships to explain COVID and answer questions,” Dobbs said. “He has also worked with providers to sign them up to give COVID vaccine, and he fielded questions from providers about allergies and other complications related to the administration of the vaccine.”

WATCH: Mississippi Stories: Dan Edney

READ MORE: Dr. Daniel Edney debunks common vaccine myths

The post State Board of Health names Dr. Daniel P. Edney as new State Health Officer appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Following a failed attempt to lease a building from the Jackson Public School District, Midtown Public Charter School will relocate out of the Midtown neighborhood to a building near the intersection of Northside Drive and I-55 for the upcoming school year.

The Charter School Authorizer Board approved the move on Tuesday.

Midtown Public, first opened in 2015, currently serves 240 students in grades 5-8, according to the Mississippi Department of Education. Midtown Partners, the operators of the charter school, attempted to rent Rowan Middle School, which was closed in 2017. The building briefly housed an alternate GED program, but has been unoccupied for multiple years.

Charter schools are free public schools that do not report to a school board, like traditional public schools do. Instead, they are governed by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board. These schools are controversial among traditional public school supporters because they have more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction, and are funded by local school districts based on enrollment.

This was the point of contention among JPS supporters and officials. This school year alone, JPS has paid $888,747.60 to the school. If the district allowed Midtown to lease one of its unused buildings, it could recoup funds with the rent and repairs the charter school was willing to make. But the reason Midtown proposed a move at all was to expand enrollment, meaning ultimately JPS would be paying the school more money in future school years.

JPS school board members raised a number of concerns with the proposed lease when it was presented at a board meeting on April 5, including the amount of the rent payments and the processes of maintenance repairs and possible reauthorization of the lease.

The charter school would have paid $78,000 a year in the lease and approximately $115,000 in proposed repairs. Some board members pushed for a higher lease amount, but state law prohibits public school districts from charging above the market value of the property.

There was also a discussion among board members about the broader merits of the charter school system, which Superintendent Errick Greene said should not be conflated with the issue of the lease at hand.

“Whether Midtown, the charter school, should exist or not, should operate in Jackson, Mississippi or not, that’s a worthy discussion and an issue that I’m sure is ripe for some larger movement and lobbying around the law that allows it to be,” Greene said. “We find ourselves in a situation where we have a number of buildings that are shuttered, with lots of ideas about how we might use those buildings, but we have an organization standing in front of us right now with dollars that we know they have because they come through us and go to them, and an opportunity to recoup some of those dollars.”

Board member Cynthia Thompson said she felt they didn’t need to take the first offer that presented itself and suggested recruiting proposals to use the space for another purpose. She also expressed frustration with the design of the charter school system more broadly.

“I understand the constraints that are given to us as a district to follow. But it’s hard to play ball when the other person doesn’t have to follow those rules,” she said.

At the following board meeting on April 19, nine people came to speak with two-thirds opposed to the rental of Rowan.

Ronica Smith, a parent of two Midtown Public students who came to speak in support of the lease, said that her children have done well and been excited about learning since attending.

“Midtown is a good school. If you give Midtown a chance to get Rowan, y’all are going to see, it’s going to blossom,” she said.

Other community members mentioned Midtown’s low test scores as a concern with issuing the lease, which was also previously the subject of state inquiry.

“We live in a state that has historically underfunded the education of Black children, and continues to do so while simultaneously increasing funding to entities such as Midtown Public Charter Schools, which has done a subpar job of educating Black children at best, scoring in the bottom ten percent of Mississippi schools,” said a man who spoke during the public comment section at the meeting.

JPS Board President Ed Sivak pointed out that when Rowan was closed, students in Midtown were instead sent to Brinkley Middle School, which does not score any better than Midtown Public.

The lease was presented again with amendments at the April 19 board meeting, which board member Robert Luckett moved to approve, citing the support of the residents of Midtown for the lease. But lacking support from any other board members, the proposal failed.

Kristi Hendrix, the executive director of Midtown Partners, could not be reached for comment but said in a letter to the Charter School Authorizer Board that the new facility they will be relocating to off of Northside Drive was previously used for education, making it an easy transition.

“We were very hopeful that a lease could be secured with the Jackson Public Schools for the usage of one of their two vacant buildings for the neighborhood,” Hendrix said in the letter. “Despite overwhelming support from the Midtown residents, the Jackson Public School Board expressed their desire to let the building sit vacant as opposed to allowing a charter school to use them.”

Kevin Parkinson, principal of Midtown Public, also could not be reached for comment.

The post JPS denies Midtown Charter School lease of unused building appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn was closely involved in one of the harrowing stories featured in an explosive investigation into the mishandling of sexual abuse within Southern Baptist Convention churches.

The 300-page report, made public by the nation’s largest Protestant denomination this week, reveals that top Southern Baptist leaders across the nation systemically mishandled sexual abuse claims, often working to cover them up and suppress victims and their families. The report was compiled by a third-party firm, which scrutinized more than 20 years of sexual abuse accusations in Southern Baptist churches across the nation.

A Mississippi case involving a decades-long coverup and high-ranking Baptist officials defending an abuser was highlighted in the report. Though Gunn is not named in the report, his involvement as an attorney in the case was scrutinized broadly by the state and national press and even Southern Baptist-focused and other religious news outlets.

John Langworthy, a former music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, resigned from the church in 2011 after admitting that he sexually abused young boys when he worked at two Mississippi Baptist churches in the 1980s and then in a Texas Baptist church.

Gunn, who has served in leadership roles at Morrison Heights, was the church’s attorney as Langworthy’s case played out in the courts and in the public sphere. The speaker was unable to be reached for comment regarding this article.

Langworthy was first accused of abusing a teenage boy at a Texas Baptist megachurch in 1989. But that church’s pastor Jack Graham, who once served a stint as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, allowed Langworthy to be dismissed quietly and did not report the abuse to police at the time, the report said.

Langworthy immediately moved back to Mississippi, where he landed a job in 1990 as music minister at Morrison Heights and later as a choir teacher at Clinton High School. Langworthy held those jobs until 2011, when details of his abuse were first made public. 

Amy Smith, an advocate for child abuse survivors who had worked in 1989 at the Texas church where Langworthy was first accused, worked for months starting in 2010 to get Morrison Heights church leaders — and really anyone else — to hear her story about the Texas accusations of Langworthy. Smith told a blogger the story about Langworthy’s Texas abuse allegation and the ensuing coverup at the Texas church, and the blog published that information in June 2011.

With the accusations made public via the blog, Langworthy confessed to the Morrison Heights congregation in August 2011 that he abused children during his time in Texas and while he was in Mississippi before that. Smith then shared video of Langworthy’s confession with journalists in Texas and Mississippi, and the story was broadcast. Several victims of Langworthy’s saw those news reports and alerted authorities. In September 2011, he was indicted in Hinds County on charges of sexually abusing five boys ages 6-13 in Jackson and Clinton between 1980 and 1984.

Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Jamie McBride told the Clarion Ledger at the time that an investigation showed Langworthy was “involved heavily with the youth choirs from 1980 to 1984 at First Baptist Church of Jackson and Daniel Memorial Baptist Church in Jackson.”

When Langworthy confessed to the abuse in 2011, Gunn was set to become one of Mississippi’s most powerful political leaders as speaker of the House. But that same year, Gunn had become ensnared in the church scandal.

Gunn was publicly accused of trying to cover up Langworthy’s abuse before his confession and indictment. Amy Smith, the Texas church staffer who first disclosed details of Langworthy’s earlier abuse to the blogger, told Mississippi reporters in 2011 that she heard from Gunn three months before Langworthy publicly admitted to the abuse and four months before he was indicted.

Gunn emailed Smith in May 2011 “to discuss a resolution,” he wrote. Smith declined to speak with Gunn and perceived his email as an effort to sweep the allegations under the rug.

“Seems to me like he was asking to offer me something to go away to be quiet and that was not acceptable to me, that’s not protecting children and I simply said no,” Smith told WJTV at the time.

After Smith refused to speak with him, Gunn reportedly contacted another advocate who was also publicly discussing Langworthy’s past crimes. Sherry LeFils, a former Texas probation officer who worked with thousands of sex offenders, said at the time that she had three phone conversations with Gunn regarding Langworthy’s case. She told WJTV that one phone call, in particular, struck her as odd.

“My take was what we can do to make this right, to make this go away,” LeFils told WJTV.

Gunn also faced broad public scrutiny for advising Morrison Heights church leaders to not talk with the Hinds County District Attorney’s investigators about what Langworthy told them about his alleged child sex abuse. To back up that counsel, Gunn cited a “priest-penitent privilege” law — which legal scholars later said was not relevant to the case.

“What I’m telling you is that the elders are bound by privilege. Under the law, there’s a legal privilege that attaches. Are there no exceptions to that? No, there are no exceptions to that,” Gunn said in a WJTV interview in 2011.

Smith, who prosecutors later credited with the work that ultimately inspired Langworthy’s victims to come forward, blistered Gunn publicly for that position.

“It is very troubling that Philip Gunn as the legal representative for Morrison Heights Baptist Church is trying to keep information from Hinds County prosecutors about a recently arrested and indicted child molester on whose behalf Gunn attempted to ‘discuss a resolution’ with me last May,” Smith said in November 2011.

Gunn and other church leaders maintained they found no evidence that Langworthy abused children in his 21 years as music minister at Morrison Heights. But what church leaders knew was never divulged publicly because a trial never occurred.

Even after his public admission to the Morrison Heights congregation, Langworthy cut a guilty plea deal that kept him out of prison. He served five years of probation, could have no contact with the survivors of his abuse, and had to remain registered as a sex offender. The state’s sex offender registry says Langworthy died in 2019.

Graham, the pastor of the Texas megachurch where Langworthy’s abuse accusation was allegedly ignored, refused to speak with investigators who were compiling the report released this week.

Meanwhile, Southern Baptists are reeling as they reckon with the report and its broad negative attention.

Russell Moore, a Mississippi native and prominent Southern Baptist Convention leader who left the denomination in 2021 for, among other reasons, its lax response to the sexual abuse scandal, penned a column for Christianity Today this week about the damning report.

I can’t imagine the rage being experienced right now by those who have survived church sexual abuse. I only know firsthand the rage of one who never expected to say anything but ‘we’ when referring to the Southern Baptist Convention, and can never do so again. I only know firsthand the rage of one who loves the people who first told me about Jesus, but cannot believe that this is what they expected me to do, what they expected me to be. I only know firsthand the rage of one who wonders while reading what happened on the seventh floor of that Southern Baptist building, how many children were raped, how many people were assaulted, how many screams were silenced, while we boasted that no one could reach the world for Jesus like we could.

That’s more than a crisis. It’s even more than just a crime. It’s blasphemy. And anyone who cares about heaven ought to be mad as hell.

Russell Moore in Christianity Today on May 22, 2022

The post Philip Gunn’s connection to the Southern Baptist Convention sexual abuse scandal appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Generic Medicine appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Frances Poole says she is still rationing medication from 2019 after doctors raced to save her life by removing her colon. 

Last time she attempted to have the pills refilled at the pharmacy, she said the bill was $70. She should also be having regular checkups with a specialist. 

“I just cannot afford that,” said Poole, 55. 

Poole has spent the last seven years at Maximus Federal in Hattiesburg, a call center contracted by the federal government. All workday, she answers questions about the Obamacare marketplace. Often, she says, the health benefits she’s helping callers with are better than what she has through Maximus. 

That’s why she’s become one of the call center’s most vocal employees, working alongside the Communications Workers of America and its local Hattiesburg chapter to organize Maximus workers. She attended their first strike in March and was back on the picket line for a two-day strike on Monday and Tuesday.

In addition to offering assistance with the Affordable Care Act marketplace, call center workers also handle Medicare inquiries. There are about 10,000 Maximus workers across 11 call centers. Workers in a Louisiana call center also went on strike this week.

Workers say they’ve seen no response from Maximus – the nation’s largest federal contractor – since their first strike in March. Their biggest complaints continue to be benefits and wages. The changes the company made earlier this year to improve pay and health care aren’t enough, according to workers.

Maximus lowered the health care deductibles from $4,500 to $2,500 after employee pressure began in 2021. 

“But who has $2,500?” Poole said. 

Call center workers make about $15 an hour, leaving most of the Hattiesburg workers with wages between $31,000 to $35,000 a year before taxes. That latest hike came just ahead of a presidential order in January that all federal contract workers be paid $15 an hour. 

Most of the Hattiesburg workers were making between $9 and $11 before the pandemic. 

On Tuesday morning – while dozens of workers, activists and CWA members marched to deliver the second-day strike notice – Maximus leaders held a virtual investors call. 

Maximus CEO Bruce Caswell called the company’s “people its advantage.” 

“Our commitment to make Maximus an employer of choice is not a new goal,” Caswell told investors, as he touted flexibility the company offers with work-from-home options and the recent cuts to health care costs. 

In its second quarter report that came out earlier this month, Maximus reported a revenue increase of 22.7% to $1.18 billion compared to last year. The company expects revenue for the latest fiscal year to range between $4.5 to $4.7 billion. 

With the costs of essentials like gas and food on the rise, Poole and her coworkers say it has been all the more difficult to stretch each paycheck enough. Their wages, workers say, have never kept up with inflation making it near impossible to build up any sort of meaningful savings. 

“What man or woman or family can survive at $9.05 an hour?” Jaimie Brown, 49, said, referring to his long-held former wage as a Maximus worker. “Seven years I’d been doing this. What makes me not a professional? Why can’t you pay me as a professional?”

Brown said he was regularly assisting insurance brokers do their jobs.

He is a single parent of a 7-year-old son. Many of his former coworkers are single mothers; most are Black. 

Brown’s employment ended with Maximus in March. He filed a complaint against the National Labor Relations Review Board with the help of the CWA, the union Maximus employees are working with. The CWA said in a statement that they’re holding Maxiums accountable for discouraging workers from forming a union. 

Brown declined to comment on the specifics of the complaint and his separation from the company. Maximus said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but that it respects workers rights to organize. 

Brown has lived in Mississippi for almost two decades. He was raised in New York, where unions are more common. Organizers and experts across Mississippi have said one of the biggest hurdles organizers face in the South is educating workers on their rights. 

READ MORE: Starbucks employees and others trying to unionize in Mississippi face decades-old hardships

“There’s going to be some ups and downs,” Brown said. “You got to take the bumps with it in order for improvement. It takes a fight … but there will be no benefits unless we all stand up to do this.” 

In a statement, Maximus said it “routinely meets with its employees to address various concerns and issues.” It also says it has an employee hotline where workers can submit issues anonymously. 

CWA said nearly 100 workers went on strike this week in Mississippi. 

“It can all go around,” Brown said, referring to forming a union. “Everyone could win.”

The post Maximus call center workers in Mississippi continue striking for better wages and benefits appeared first on Mississippi Today.