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A friend recently told me his 13-year-old son is in a bit of a quandary. The kid is already 6 feet, 2 inches tall, athletic and smart. Coaches from every sport at his school are pulling at him: baseball, football, basketball and soccer. A couple want him to choose a sport and specialize, this before he needs to shave.

The kid just wants to play. Everything.

But when the seasons overlap, the seventh grader has to choose. It doesn’t have to be that way. 

For Exhibit A, I give you: Arch Manning, the No. 1 Class of 2023 football recruit in the nation. On a recent trip to New Orleans, I watched Arch and his No. 1 ranked Newman Greenies teammates play. Basketball.

Before we really get into this, I should answer the question I get asked several times a week. That is: Where will Arch Manning — son of Cooper, grandson of Archie and Olivia, nephew of Peyton and Eli — play college football? The answer is I don’t know. I don’t think he knows. I know Grandpa Archie, the one Arch calls “Red,” doesn’t know. If there’s any news in his recruitment, it is that he has trimmed Clemson from his list. The remaining four favorites are, in alphabetical order, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and Texas.

We are currently in a “dead period” of college football recruiting, which meant that no football coaching celebrities were at Saturday night’s Newman game. Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian have all taken in Newman basketball games this season, often bringing several of their staffers with them. Other coaches have done the same.

They have been there to be seen by Arch Manning, the quarterback prodigy who has everything you look for in a quarterback: strong arm, accuracy, athleticism, size, toughness, and quick-trigger decision making. This one also has the pedigree.

What these football coaches see before them on the basketball court is a role player, a kid who prides himself on being a good teammate. They see a sturdy, wavy-haired, competitive young man who comes off the bench and helps Newman win games by grabbing loose balls and rebounds, setting picks, making crisp passes and by playing good defense. In basketball, he is not the star. He is nonetheless a winner.

“To me, Arch is a breath of fresh air,” says his basketball coach, Randy Livingston, a former two-time national player of the year at Newman. “He enjoys being a high school athlete. He’s competitive. He loves to compete. I have known the family well since I was 12, so the family knows me and trusts me with him.

“Arch knows our system backwards and forwards. He knows the offense, knows the defense, and he rarely makes a mistake. He’s great with our younger players. He’s a great kid. We are lucky and blessed to have him. He and Will Randle (Newman’s highly recruited tight end and one of Arch’s best friends) both come off the bench and bring a real toughness to our team.”

Both play more minutes than some of the starters. Both are usually in the game at crunch time — that is, on the rare occasion Newman (23-4) has a crunch time.

For Exhibit B in this case against specialization for young athletes, I give you the Manning family. Archie Manning was a four-sport letterman at Drew High School only because they didn’t offer five. Or six. He played football, baseball, basketball and ran track.

“Doing both track and baseball sometimes got tricky,” Archie Manning said. “One day, we had a track meet and baseball game going at adjacent fields. We came in to bat just as they were lining up for the 880-relay. They hollered at me to come run the relay — and I did, in my baseball uniform.”

Archie Manning was a high school football, basketball and baseball star — so talented as a baseball shortstop he was drafted four times by Major League teams, the first time by the Braves right out of high school. The point is, he played all the sports to the detriment of none. Nobody tried to stop him. One year, a couple days after the football season ended, he scored 40 points to help Drew win a basketball game.

“Maybe I’m old-fashioned,” Archie Manning said, “I think playing multiple sports makes you more well-rounded. There are certain things you do in one sport that might help you in the others.”

Says Livingston, the Newman coach: “The more well-rounded you are, the better. Look at Joe Burrow. He was a high school basketball star. Back then, lot of people thought that would be his sport. My favorite sport growing up was football. That’s what I was going to be. To this day, I regret I couldn’t play it more. You just shouldn’t box a kid in. Let them play. Let them develop. You never know what the future holds.”

Livingston was junior high and high school basketball teammates with both Cooper and Peyton Manning. They won state championships together. They also played probably a thousand games of pick-up basketball, often in the Mannings’ driveway.

“It was usually me and Archie against Peyton and Cooper,” Livingston said. “I’m telling you, Archie could still play.”

Says Cooper Manning who remembers fondly those games, “The losers had to take out the trash.”

Cooper and Ellen Manning have advocated playing multiple sports to all their three children, including daughter Mae, a high school volleyball star, now at the University of Virginia. 

“I wanted them outside, running around, being active, using all their muscles,” Cooper Manning said.

That includes Heid Manning, Arch’s younger brother, the center who snaps the ball to his brother on the Newman football team.

“Heid played a lot baseball when he was younger, but he came to me one year and told me he wanted to play lacrosse,” Cooper Manning said. “So now he’s on the Newman lacrosse team and loves it. They’re good, too.”

The post In age of sports specialization, the Mannings beg to differ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House Clerk Andrew Ketchings said he acted on his own to remove the statue of racist former governor and U.S. senator Theodore Bilbo from public view in the Mississippi State Capitol.

Bilbo, known for his extreme racist rhetoric and views, had been memorialized with a statue in the Mississippi Capitol since the 1950s. Various Black legislators and others have for many years called for the removal of the Bilbo statue, saying it was inappropriate that such a vocal white supremacist was one of two governors to be memorialized with statues in the Capitol.

“Because of everything he stood for, I think this should have been done years ago,” Ketchings told Mississippi Today and the Associated Press on Wednesday. “It was way past time to do it.”

The Bilbo statue is now locked in a closet behind the elevator on the House side of the Capitol and wrapped in a fire retardant. Ketchings declined to open the room.

Mississippi Today reported last week that the statue of Bilbo was no longer in room 113 of the state Capitol, the largest House committee room, as it had been since the early 1980s. Last week, no one would publicly take responsibility for the move. Legislative leaders, including House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, said they did not even know the statue was missing.

“It was purely my decision, 100%,” said Ketchings, who added he did not inform any of the legislative leadership of his plan.

Ketchings said he has since told the House leadership he moved the statue. He said House leaders did not seem inclined to try to restore the statue to public view.

Instead, he hired a crew with state funds through the Department of Finance and Administration to move the bronze statue on a weekend in October. The cost, he said, was between $4,000 and $5,000.

READ MORE: Where’s Bilbo? Statue of racist former governor missing from Capitol

The bronze statue is allegedly life-sized, standing 5 feet 2 inches tall. Ketchings said it is not unusual in his position as House clerk to make decisions over maintenance issues in rooms of the Capitol controlled by the House.

In his capacity as House clerk in recent years, Ketchings has refurbished the chairs and replaced the carpet in room 113. One reason he did not move the statue earlier is that he could not find a suitable storage place. The statue would not fit through many of the doors in the building, Ketchings said.

Bilbo died of throat cancer in 1947 in the midst of efforts by his colleague to not seat him in the U.S. Senate after his most recent election victory. Soon after his death, a joint resolution adopted by the Mississippi Legislature in 1948 established a commission to memorialize Theodore Gilmore Bilbo who “worked unceasingly and often alone to preserve Southern customs and traditions and in so doing sought to preserve the true American way of life…and particularly his efforts to preserve this state and nation by his successful fight against the enactment of national legislation, which would have destroyed the United State of America, if the same had been enacted.”

READ MORE: The Bilbo statue was first moved by Gov. William Winter in the 1980s

The resolution calls for the statue to be placed “in a prominent place on the first floor of the new Capitol building.”

Ketchings said he does not know if the resolution is still binding, but opted to keep the statue on the first floor as the resolution mandated.

On the same day that the statue was moved, a bust of Thomas Bailey, who served as governor in the 1940s, was transported from room 113 back to the state Department of Archives and History, which owns the bust.

There are no other statues in the Capitol other than a bust of Lt. Gov. Evelyn Gandy in a second floor Senate committee room. Gandy served in various public offices in the state and is one of the few women in Mississippi elected to statewide office.

All the governors, including Bilbo, have portraits in the Capitol.

The clerk is elected by the House members to oversee the day-to-day operations of the chamber. Ketchings has been the House clerk since Gunn was elected speaker in 2012, becoming the first Republican presiding officer of the chamber since the 1800s. Ketchings previously served as a House member representing Adams County and also served in the Gov. Haley Barbour administration.

For years the statue was displayed prominently in the Capitol rotunda, but according to various accounts in the early 1980s during Capitol renovations then-Gov. William Winter had it moved to room 113.

At the time, room 113 was not used as much as it is today. Multiple House committees meet in the room. In addition, the Legislative Black Caucus and the Republican caucus also meet there.

Bilbo served two terms as governor. After that he was elected in the 1930s to the U.S. Senate where he fought against anti lynching laws and advocated for the deportation of Blacks to Africa.

During a filibuster to try to block Senate passage of an anti lynching bill, Bilbo said, ”If you succeed in the passage of this bill, you will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.”

The post House clerk Andrew Ketchings takes credit for moving Bilbo statue out of public view appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi House members are developing a framework of how they want to spend $1.8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds, but seem content on waiting until the end of the session to reveal specifics.

Senate leaders, on the other hand, have released their plans on how to spend the American Rescue Plan funds and have begun passing them.

The dueling strategies will almost certainly lead to end-of-session negotiations between a handful of leaders from both chambers, and it will likely be weeks before Mississippians learn how lawmakers will decide to spend the historic amount of federal funds.

The House is passing bills, but for the most part they are not placing the exact amount of funds in the bill. House Pro Tem Jason White, R-West, said those exact amounts will be worked out in conference between House and Senate leaders at the end of the session.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed its largest ARPA bill — a measure to use $750 million of the money to create a state match for city, county and rural water association infrastructure projects. The state would match local governments’ spending of the ARPA funds they are receiving directly from the federal government. Federal law allows the ARPA funds to be used for local governments’ water and sewerage infrastructure.

Senate Bill 2822 would provide a dollar-for-dollar match to counties and large cities for qualified water, sewerage and stormwater projects. For smaller cities that are receiving less than $1 million in direct ARPA money, the state would match qualified projects $2 to $1. For rural water associations with 250 or more customers, the program would provide grants of up to $2.5 million for qualified projects.

READ MORE: Senate unveils plan for spending $1.8 billion in federal pandemic stimulus

Sen. John Polk, chair of the Senate subcommittee handling ARPA spending, said the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, with help from the Department of Health, would vet and approve applications for projects, based on a grading scale. Polk said this grade would include whether a system is under federal orders to improve or having problems such as high lead levels, and it would give greater weight to projects “ready to go within six months.”

Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, said the state fund should focus first on water and sewer systems in the worst shape, and in communities that can least afford upgrades. Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, said those under federal orders to upgrade should get top priority.

Polk said the grading system — and $2-to-$1 match for smaller cities — would address those issues to some extent but, “We have to keep it fair for everyone. Every area has needs.”

Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, said, “I think this bill, along with the appropriations bill to follow, is the most important thing we will pass this session. We need to look at this as one-time money that we will probably never see again.”

Blount asked Polk whether the proposed ARPA spending would be enough to fix water and sewerage problems and needs in Mississippi.

“I do not,” Polk said. “I know, for instance, the rural water associations told us they would need about $700 million to cover all they need.” But, Polk said, “I’m not convinced that this is a state problem” and that local governments should do a better job of keeping up water and sewerage infrastructure.

READ MORE: Lawmakers wanted input on spending $1.8 billion in pandemic stimulus. They got $7 billion in requests.

The Senate passed on to the House several other ARPA spending bills on Tuesday, including a measure that would provide up to $10 million for infrastructure projects at private colleges, one that would provide death benefits for first responders who die from COVID-19. The chamber also passed Senate Bill 2721, an ARPA workforce bill that would provide training, loan repayment and enhanced pay for nurses and other health workers.

In the House, White said the focus of the spending of the federal funds should be on helping local governments with their water and sewer needs and helping health care entities that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There is a pandemic. We have the money because of the pandemic, so we ought to spend at least some it to help with the pandemic,” he said.

White said he does not know of an area where the one-time funds can have more of an impact than on local water and sewer needs. He said he envisions $400 million to $600 million being put in that area in the first year. White also said he does not necessarily believe all of the funds should be spent during the 2022 session.

Legislation that has passed the House:

• Would create a funds to help rural water associations with their infrastructure. It would require no matching funds.
• Would create a program to help municipalities and counties with their water and wastewater infrastructure, requiring a 20% match from the local governments.
• Would create a funds to deposit funds to aid the city of Jackson with its water and wastewater infrastructure. The city, to receive the funds, would have to commit to providing regular reports to the state on how the money was being spent.

The outdated Jackson water system is under scrutiny from federal officials who have expressed concern about the quality of the city’s water. Plus, the system routinely breaks down during extreme cold weather.

Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, said negotiations are ongoing on the amount of state support the city will receive. But he said communications between city officials and legislative leaders in determining the amount of help the city will get are currently positive.

“Absolutely, they are good,” he said.

The House has also passed legislation that would provide local law enforcement and firefighters (including volunteers) $1,000 in premium pay for their efforts during the pandemic. And hospitals could receive grants of up to $250,000 to help with treatment of coronavirus patients. Those funds could be used to help pay their health care staff.

Plus, a program would be established under legislation that has passed the House to develop a plan to expand nursing programs at community colleges. The Senate is proposing similar spending for nursing programs.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Tracking Mississippi’s historic influx of federal cash

The post House, Senate take different paths on spending historic federal funds appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Prime Shrimp, a New Orleans company, joins as the podcast’s sponsor on a busy week in Mississippi sports. The Cleveland boys discuss the upcoming Super Bowl, Joe Burrow’s Magnolia State roots, a new head coach for the New Orleans Saints, Arch Manning, a busy time in Mississippi high school sports. Oxford native Davis McCool joins to talk about Prime Shrimp (and Ole Miss baseball).

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: A new sponsor joins on Super Bowl week appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A Hinds County judge has reassigned the criminal case of retired Mississippi welfare director John Davis to a special judge who happens to be Davis’ former colleague, according to a court order posted Tuesday.

The new judge, former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jess Dickinson, ran the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services while Davis served as director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

The two agencies that Dickinson and Davis ran interacted closely; the offices used to be one in the same until the Legislature separated CPS into its own department in 2016. But CPS still gets funding from the welfare agency.

In fact, Child Protection Services, which oversees the state’s foster care system, relies on MDHS sharing a portion of its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to satisfy its budget each year.

TANF is the federal welfare fund Davis allegedly defrauded.

The connection between Davis and Dickinson raises questions about a possible conflict of interest. But because of a gag order in the case, the parties will not say what prompted the reassignment or the likeliness that Dickinson will reassign the case again.

The Mississippi Supreme Court appointed several special judges, including Dickinson, in 2020 to help Hinds County clear its backlog of cases, which is how Dickinson wound up presiding over his contemporary’s case.

Reached Tuesday evening, Dickinson told Mississippi Today he had not yet learned that Davis’ case had been assigned to him within a batch of cases Hinds County is transferring to him.

The State Auditor’s Office has accused Davis of perpetuating a scheme that funneled $70 million in federal funds away from the needy between 2016 and 2020. Prosecutors charged Davis criminally for just a fraction of the misspending. They say he allegedly defrauded the state by paying his close associate, former pro-wrestler Brett DiBiase, for work he didn’t conduct and conspiring with nonprofit founder Nancy New to use embezzled welfare funds to send DiBiase to rehab.

From 2016 to 2019, Davis’ department transferred $42.5 million of its TANF funding to child welfare services, according to figures it reported to the federal government.

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Davis as welfare director in January of 2016 and Dickenson as the head of CPS in September of 2017.

During Dickinson’s tenure, his agency was plagued by budget shortfalls and threats of takeover from the federal government. CPS failed, year after year, to comply with the terms of a court settlement in a long-running federal lawsuit. The 2004 complaint accused Mississippi of failing to protect children in its custody. The plaintiffs maintain that foster children continue to be abused and neglected as recently as 2019, according to media reports.

The fact that Mississippi could have used the money Davis’ agency and its contractors allegedly wasted to strengthen supports for families and reduce neglect inextricably links the welfare scandal to the condition of the foster care system in Mississippi.

Most of the alleged misspending — such as a million-dollar promotional gig for Brett Favre, a new $5 million volleyball stadium, $2 million in personal investments in a pharmaceutical startup, a horse ranch for Marcus Dupree, and more — occurred within a program called Families First for Mississippi.

Families First was highly publicized as the programmatic arm of a judicial initiative, called Family First, which was supposed to prevent kids from being taken from their homes. But for tens of millions of dollars, it delivered very little.

Davis announced his retirement in July of 2019, just a couple weeks after a few of his employees took a tip about agency misspending to Gov. Bryant, who relayed the information to another one of his appointees, State Auditor Shad White. Dickinson retired in January of 2020 at the end of Bryant’s administration. The next month, agents arrested Davis and three months later, the auditor released a report questioning $94 million of his agency’s purchases, mostly from the TANF fund.

While Davis allegedly conspired in what officials are calling the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history, Dickinson struggled to keep operations afloat at an already cash-strapped agency with a dwindling budget.

Now, Dickinson could have a great impact on what happens to Davis.

Senior Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Tomie Green signed the order that placed Dickinson over the case. It contains all of one sentence.

The case is reassigned to Dickinson, the order signed Jan. 31 reads, “on the basis of Mississippi Supreme Court’s Orders providing relief to the 7th Circuit Court District due to backlog created during the Coronavirus pursuant under 2021-22 Cares Act.”

The original judge in the case, Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Adrienne Wooten, most recently moved the trial to March 8, a full two years after his February 2020 arrest. But counsel for Davis and state prosecutors both requested another continuance on Jan. 28.

An administrative assistant for Wooten said she could not provide a reason for the reassignment. The district attorney’s office declined to comment. Judge Green and Davis’ attorney Merrida Coxwell did not return Mississippi Today’s calls Tuesday.

Prosecutors, attorneys for Davis and the auditor’s office have previously cited a gag order in the case as preventing them from answering questions from the press.

A new indictment filed in January against Nancy New, who partially ran Families First, alleges that the four $40,000 payments her nonprofit made to the luxury rehab facility in Malibu where DiBiase was receiving treatment were actually bribes for Davis. Prosecutors allege the $160,000 extinguished debt Davis had, and in exchange, he agreed to extend the New nonprofit’s TANF grant. The accusation suggests Davis personally benefitted from New helping DiBiase, a new theory in the case.

Davis has not been charged with bribery.

The post New judge in John Davis’ welfare embezzlement case is his former colleague appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House leaders passed legislation Tuesday that would restore a ballot initiative process, which allows citizens to bypass the Legislature and place issues on the ballot.

The constitutional resolution passed 92-26 (needing 78 to pass), and now goes to the Senate. Once the resolution passes both chambers in the same form, it will go to voters to ratify in the November 2022 general election.

The effort is needed because the Mississippi Supreme Court in May 2021 struck down the initiative process that had been in effect since the early 1990s.

The proposal passed Tuesday is different than the one that existed before May 2021. This proposal would allow voters to place issues on the ballot to change or amend general law. The initiative adopted in the early 1990s and that was struck down by the Supreme Court last year allowed voters to amend the state Constitution.

Under the new proposal, the Legislature would not be able change general law for two years after voters approved it unless for an emergency, and even then it would take a two-thirds vote of each legislative chamber to do so.

READ MORE: House committee makes first move to restore ballot initiative process

House Constitution Chair Fred Shanks and various other legislative leaders said they would prefer the process be used to amend general law because it is more difficult to change the Constitution. Changing the Constitution requires the approval of voters.

House members voting against the resolution Tuesday were primarily Democrats who support the initiative process, but opposed for various reasons the form of initiative offered by the House leadership.

Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, offered an amendment that would give voters the right to appeal to the Supreme Court to try to block any change to the initiative in the first two years. The amendment failed, but Shanks said he might work with Johnson to add later in the process some form of an appeal of changes in the first two years.

The reason the legislation is being taken up because in a controversial May 2021 ruling, the state Supreme Court ruled the process invalid because language in the Constitution mandated the required number of signatures be gathered equally from five congressional districts. The state has only four congressional districts, losing one as a result of the 2000 Census.

READ MORE: Mississippi Supreme Court overturns medical marijuana program and ballot initiative process

The proposal that passed the House this week would require a pro rata share of signatures be gathered from whatever number of congressional districts the state has.

READ MORE: Will lawmakers be willing to give up some of their power by restoring ballot initiative?

The post House votes to restore a version of Mississippi ballot initiative process appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would give lawmakers a pay bump of $6,000 for the first year of a four-year term, and $4,500 a year for the other three years of the term.

Mississippi’s part-time legislators are paid a base of $23,500 a year — although most make between $40,000 and $50,000 a year in salary, per diem, reimbursements and other payments. Some lawmakers’ total compensation is around $70,000 a year.

The $23,500 includes a base salary of $10,000 a year, plus $1,500 a month for office expenses during months when the legislature is not in session — despite the fact that most lawmakers have other jobs and don’t have separate legislative offices in their district. Many rely on Capitol staffers to help with administrative work year-round.

Lawmakers do not receive the $1,500 a month office payment when the Legislature is in session. Typically, the first year of a term the Legislature meets four months, then three months each of the following three years.

Senate Bill 2794 would pay lawmakers the $1,500 in months when the Legislature is in session.

Lawmakers also receive about $150 per diem — living expenses — for each day they spend in Jackson (including those who live in or near it), and mileage reimbursement set at the federal government rate, currently about 58 cents a mile. All members are allowed at least four days a month at the Capitol, with chairmen allowed six days and vice chairmen five days. Extra days must be approved.

The Senate bill, which now heads to the House for consideration, was passed on a “morning roll call vote,” with only a few senators saying they wanted to be counted as a no vote.

The post Mississippi lawmakers propose more pay for themselves appeared first on Mississippi Today.

State Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez says he can remember his parents “having him on the picket line when he was 10 years old” in Adams County because a local store would not employee Black cashiers.

But he said the same parents developed relationships with white power brokers in Adams County: a banker who helped his father obtain a needed loan for his business, and a real estate agent who helped his father purchase land along the Mississippi River that powerful white residents didn’t want an African American to own. His mother, Johnson said, developed relationships with white school administrators that advanced her career.

Johnson, the Democratic leader in the Mississippi House of Representatives, applies those values at the Capitol, where Republicans can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote. Even outside the Capitol, Mississippi Democrats wield little political influence and have struggled to organize and fight against a growing Republican landscape.

Often, Johnson said, he tries to balance his party’s platforms and stances on issues with his pragmatism about where the power really lies.

“I know we have possibilities in this state to do things we have not done,” Johnson said Monday during a lunch meeting of the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government/Capitol Press Corps.

“I continue to work that way,” Johnson said. “I don’t do it because I am a Democrat. I don’t do it because I am a Black person. I do it because (Mississippi) is where I want to be … I hope it is the beginning of what I think are progressive ways to get things done around the state, to continue to work together to get things done.”

Johnson has earned respect among many lawmakers — and sometimes criticism from his fellow Democrats — for often working with House Speaker Philip Gunn and other Republican House leaders. He said even though he disagrees with Gunn on many issues, he considers him a friend.

READ MORE: Robert Johnson became a key ally of last Democratic speaker after voting against him

He pointed to Gunn’s massive tax restructuring plan as an example of where he has tried to work with Gunn. He and most House Democrats voted in January for Gunn’s proposal to phase out the income tax and increase the sales tax while reducing the tax on food and on car tags.

“Income tax, getting rid of income tax long-term, it doesn’t make much sense at all. But short-term, it gives me an opportunity to be in the room with Philip Gunn when we’ve got $1.8 billion (in federal COVID-19 relief funds) to spend, $1 billion in surplus funds, figuring out what we can do for people all over the state,” Johnson said.

He added, “As we move this state forward, we need to try to find places we can agree.”

Johnson questioned whether the Republican majority can ultimately agree on a plan to eliminate the income tax because of disagreements in how to undertake such a massive endeavor.

“I am betting they butt heads and nobody passes anything,” Johnson predicted, but added that at least Gunn’s plan cuts the state’s grocery tax and reduces by 50% the cost of car tags — both proposals that he said would benefit poor and working people.

Still, Johnson said he often becomes frustrated by what he says is a lack of progress in Mississippi. He believes state leaders are missing opportunities to help the state, such as not expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance for primarily the working poor. He said eliminating the income tax would not convince young, successful people to stay or move to the state. He said fixing the state’s infrastructure and addressing crime issues, especially in the city of Jackson, would be a much more effective ways to grow the state’s population.

“Jackson, the capital city, is the front door to the state of Mississippi,” Johnson said.

He said expanding Medicaid and fixing infrastructure could be done with existing funds, including $1.8 billion in federal funds, and go a long way toward addressing the problems in the state.

Still, even as he tries to work across the aisle to get things done, the frustrations mount. He said just about each week of the legislative session, he asks himself, “What the f— are we doing here in the state of Mississippi?”

PODCAST: Rep. Robert Johnson discusses key issues ahead of 2022 legislative session

The post Why Rep. Robert Johnson, a top Democratic leader, often works with Republicans appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Mississippi lawmakers are considering getting into the venture capital business, using your tax dollars to float startup businesses.

What could go wrong?

Well, if history is any guide — plenty. The last time the state tried this, millions of dollars were misspent and stolen, no new businesses got started, somebody went to prison, and the state spent years trying to untangle what went wrong.

Taxpayers would’ve been better off if someone had taken their money down to the boats and played craps with it.

First, the new proposal: With the American Rescue Plan Act, Congress earmarked $10 billion to reauthorize the State Small Business Credit Initiative. This initiative was first created in 2010 after the Great Recession, and funded with $1.5 billion in federal tax dollars to help stimulate small business entrepreneurship through loans and investments.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Our full tracking of Mississippi’s historic influx of federal cash

Mississippi got about $13 million back then and, like many other states, just created small business loan programs. Some states also used the money for venture capital, but Mississippi did not in part because it was a relatively small amount and also in part because of its past massive boondoggle mentioned above — but more on that later.

Now, Mississippi is set to receive about $52 million. And the Mississippi Development Authority is asking lawmakers to give the agency authority to stand up a private nonprofit and create a venture capital fund with part of the money. It’s asking for this authority because, as MDA’s Chief Operating Officer Jamie Miller explained to lawmakers, “the state constitution does not allow the state to have an equity interest in a private businesses.”

The plan would be for the new nonprofit venture to get some private venture capitalists to also pitch in, find the next Google or Amazon being cooked up in someone’s garage in Toomsuba, give it money to get rolling and bingo — we’re in the money.

Now, for the history: With business leaders long lamenting the lack of venture capital floating around Mississippi, lawmakers in 1994 decided to help out, under the auspices of MDA’s predecessor agency. They approved $20 million in borrowing, and the creation of a private nonprofit to funnel the borrowed tax dollars to Magnolia Venture Capital Corporation.

But by 1997, Magnolia Venture had blown about $4.5 million on overhead including what an investigation would deem “questionable and extravagant” spending by its CEO and board. The CEO — later convicted of fraud and money laundering — had paid himself $747,000 in salary and bonuses over 18 months, and awarded companies he owned or was affiliated with $1.2 million.

Magnolia did not help a single startup get started up, and its only capital investment was $600,000 to an already existing company. The lone private investor Magnolia suckered in promptly pulled out, and the state was left holding the bag on millions of dollars in interest payments.

When the latest proposal for MDA to stand up a venture capital (also known as “risk” capital, for good reason) got pitched at the Capitol, many folks who’d been around more than a minute immediately thought of Magnolia Venture.

But MDA Interim Director Laura Hipp said these are different times, and the ARPA funds would be subject to both federal and state scrutiny light years beyond that of the mid-1990s. A new program would require the federal venture dollars be matched with private investment (but the Magnolia Venture scheme ostensibly did, too) and MDA would closely monitor the workings of the new venture capital venture.

The proposal was offered in two “mirror” bills, Senate Bill 2772 and House Bill 1164. The House version was passed on to the full chamber by the Ways and Means committee last week with little discussion and no debate. But in the Senate, after much debate and some reminiscing about Magnolia Venture, the Finance Committee stripped out the venture capital/private nonprofit language before sending it to the full Senate.

The Senate debate over the bill created somewhat strange bedfellows. Both Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, and Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville — often at odds politically — decried the venture capital proposal as a bad idea.

Both shared the sentiment that the state “should not be in the business of picking winners and losers” by handing out tax dollars to fund speculative startup businesses.

Blount reminded his colleagues of Magnolia Venture, “a giant scandal that resulted in millions of dollars squandered.”

“The state has enough to do without getting into the venture capital business,” Blount said. “We ended up with a scandal before … Who would run this nonprofit? Would their salaries be public information, their records? Would they be subject to open meetings laws? Bid laws? … Are you familiar with Magnolia Venture Capital? Why should we do that again?”

McDaniel said such a program would “invite not only unfair competition, but corruption and cronyism.”

“I would never mean to imply anything improper or irregular is happening at MDA,” McDaniel said, “but if you look at history, any time government gets involved in private business affairs like this, you end up with misspending, strong arming, cronyism and corruption … Government creating an environment for growth, that’s one thing, and that usually means government getting out of the way, not risking the taxpayers’ capital.”

McDaniel said that, beyond the venture capital proposal, he has concerns over other parts of MDA’s plans to use the ARPA money earmarked for small business growth.

“My understanding is that some of the businesses could receive loan forgiveness up to 60% of the loans with this program,” McDaniel said. “We would be incentivizing reckless decisions and investing by businesses, with the damage falling back on the taxpayers. A loan with up to 60% forgiveness is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Blount said: “Venture capital is by definition making risky investments. That’s not our job.”

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