** FILE **Democrat Bill Renick, is shown in this May 30, 2001 file photograph taken in Jackson, Miss., and who served as Chief of Staff for former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, filed qualifying papers Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007, to run for governor. Renick, 53, is a former state senator and lobbyist. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Bill Renick, who is serving as the chair of the Commission on the Future of Northeast Mississippi, has been nominated to serve on the nine-member Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors by President Joe Biden.
Renick’s nomination was announced Friday afternoon.
“This is an honor for someone from Ashland,” Renick said. “TVA is such a major player in Mississippi, not just in electricity, but also in economic development, workforce training and education.”
TVA was created during the 1930s to, in part, help bring electricity to rural areas of seven states. In Mississippi, TVA sells electricity to municipalities and electric cooperatives encompassing almost one third of the state’s population. TVA provides electricity in all or parts of 35 counties primarily in the northern part of the state, but stretching as far south as Rankin, Scott and Newton counties in central Mississippi.
Renick would be the first Mississippian on the board since former Oxford Mayor Richard Howorth resigned from the board in August 2020.
Renick will face Senate confirmation.
Renick’s nomination for the post by the Democratic president was praised Friday by both of Mississippi’s Republican senators, Sen. Roger Wicker of Tupelo and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Brookhaven.
“The Tennessee Valley Authority has long been vital for Mississippi’s power generation and economic development needs, as evidenced by Tupelo being the first TVA city in 1934. It is imperative that our state’s interests always be represented within TVA,” Wicker said. “I am pleased that President Biden has recognized this and nominated Bill Renick to serve on the TVA Board of Directors.
“Bill has a proven record of serving our state first in public office and then as a business and economic development leader.”
Hyde-Smith said, “I’m pleased the president has nominated Bill Renick to serve on the TVA Board, which would restore Mississippi representation on this important body. I look forward to the confirmation process and believe Bill’s experience, aptitude, and extensive record of service to Mississippi will serve the TVA and its customers well.”
Until last summer, the 68-year-old Renick served as director of the workforce division for the Northeast Mississippi-based Three Rivers Planning and Development District.
Renick said he hopes that he can bring to the TVA Board expertise in the areas of economic development and work force training. He said he would strive to reach the president’s goal of energy conservation.
Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley of the Northern District of Mississippi had lobbied the White House to appoint a Mississippian to the TVA Board. He praised Renick’s nomination.
“Bill Renick is a product of the region of America that led our rural areas out of the dark in the 1930s with the help of TVA, and he knows the struggles of working families, senior citizens, and business owners as well as anyone in the entire Tennessee Valley,” Presley said. “President Biden made a smart choice in picking this good man for this job,”
Presley added, “While we fought for two seats on the TVA board, Bill Renick’s abilities, tenacity and work ethic will mean that Mississippi’s voice will be heard loud and clear. I’m proud for my friend, Bill, and even prouder that such an upstanding man will be serving on the TVA board. The Senate should act swiftly in confirming his nomination.”
Renick was elected to the Ashland Board of Aldermen at age 18 and later served as mayor. He also served on the Marshall County Board of Supervisors and in the state Senate. Renick was chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Eddie Briggs in the 1990s and later as chief of staff for Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.
Renick also was a hospital administrator.
The TVA term will be for five years. There are currently four vacancies on the board with two more seats becoming open this year. Biden also nominated on Friday Wade White, a Lyon County judge executive in Kentucky, to the TVA Board.
TVA also manages various bodies of water and other recreational and cultural facilities.
In an op-ed titled “The New Pro-Life Agenda,” Gov. Tate Reeves wrote that the pro-life movement must be more than anti-abortion – but he offered few specifics about plans to improve the lives of mothers and babies in Mississippi, which ranks last in the country in most indicators of child well-being.
Reeves said in the op-ed published Thursday that Missisisppi will “strengthen our social services infrastructure” and “build grant programs” for expectant mothers following the likely end to legal abortion in Mississippi.
Reeves’ office did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today about how much money his administration would invest in those programs and whether the governor would support extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for new moms – a measure that died in the Legislature this year. About 60% of pregnant women in Mississippi are on Medicaid.
The opinion piece was published in the Washington Stand, a news outlet run by the Family Research Council, a conservative evangelical organization that opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights.
The op-ed covered much of the same ground Reeves presented in interviews on national television in May after the leak of a draft opinion showing the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe. The ruling in the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, will likely come later this month.
“Being pro-life is about more than just being anti-abortion,” he wrote. “It requires working to ensure that every child who is brought into the world, no matter their situation, is given every opportunity for future success.”
During the 2022 legislative session, Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven authored a bill to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to a year after childbirth. He pitched it as a pro-life measure, and it garnered broad bipartisan support in the Senate, but Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, killed the legislation. Gunn claimed it would expand Medicaid, which he opposes.
Reeves largely stayed quiet on the topic during the legislative session. When CNN’s Jake Tapper mentioned the failure to pass the extension, along with the state’s lack of paid maternity leave and poor child health outcomes, Reeves said the root of the state’s issues is poverty.
But his proposed solution didn’t include direct assistance or more accessible health care.
“When you talk about these young ladies, the best thing we can do for them is to provide and improve educational opportunities for them,” he said.
Despite his claims about the importance of education, Reeves has had at times a contentious relationship with public education officials and advocates.
He has not made any serious efforts to fully fund public education. During his tenure as lieutenant governor and governor, the formula that provides the bulk of the state’s share of funding for local school districts – the Mississippi Adequate Education Program – has been underfunded more than $2 billion.
He also opposed a citizen-sponsored initiative that would have incorporated in the state Constitution more of a commitment to public education. That proposal was narrowly defeated by voters after an intense campaign by Reeves and others.
Reeves has advocated for teacher pay raises, but the salary increases that have passed the Legislature have routinely been larger than what he originally proposed. And, of course, he famously filmed his 2019 political ad touting his teacher pay raise proposal at the New Summit private school in Jackson that was later closed during a federal corruption probe. Among other things, the probe accused the school’s owners of collecting money from the state for students they did not educate.
As for increasing health care access for mothers, Reeves’ office did not respond when Mississippi Today asked whether he would support postpartum Medicaid extension during the next session.
During an April 19 press conference, a reporter asked Reeves about his stance on the issue. He said he had not spoken with the director of the Division of Medicaid about it.
“We’re continuing to look at that and many other topics that exist out there that didn’t make it through the legislative process,” he said. “We’ll make a decision in the future.”
Mississippi Republicans have refused to allow debate on expanding Medicaid eligibility for Mississippians, which would provide healthcare coverage for more than 200,000 people at no net cost to the state.
In the op-ed this week, Reeves again mentioned plans to increase adoption access in Mississippi. He wrote that the state will “extend safe haven laws that allow for mothers to give up children they can’t care for,” but his office also did not respond to a question about what that would look like in practice.
Missisisppi’s current law allows parents to relinquish an infant up to seven days after birth at a hospital, fire station, adoption agency, or mobile ambulance. Parents are not required to provide any identifying information.
“We’re going to strengthen adoption services and help more children find their forever homes,” he wrote. “We’re going to build grant programs that support mothers in getting the care they need before, during, and after pregnancy. And we’re going to strengthen our social services infrastructure.”
The op-ed offered almost no specifics in terms of policy or funding proposals. He wrote that over the last five months, his office has conducted an analysis “of our state’s laws and regulations in order to identify any possible existing rules that might present an obstacle to expectant mothers.”
His office did not answer a question about what the review had found.
As an example of steps his administration is already taking, Reeves cited the $3.5 million tax credit for the state’s crisis pregnancy centers, which he signed into law in April.
Choose Life Mississippi offers grants to about 40 such centers around the state. They aim to dissuade women from getting abortions and generally offer pregnancy tests and ultrasounds as well as baby supplies and parenting classes.
Nationally, abortion rights and women’s health advocates have criticized the centers as manipulative, focused on getting women in the door to try to stop them from seeking an abortion at any cost.
Though many of the centers in Mississippi offer free ultrasounds and medical advice to pregnant people, they are not subject to any regulations from the state department of health.
They’re also not evenly distributed around the state. A map on the Choose Life Mississippi website shows few centers in the Delta and southwest Mississippi, parts of the state that are predominately Black.
And the tax credit legislation contains no rules or reporting requirements as to how they spend the money.
Reeves and other Republican leaders in the state have repeatedly invoked the centers as a solution for pregnant women, with no mention of other investments in health care or financial support.
“We’ve got to make sure that those expectant mothers, whether they want to be pregnant or not, have access to our pregnancy resource centers,” Reeves said during a press conference on May 18. “We have 37 of them in Mississippi, situated in every region in our state.”
Reeves wrote that Roe “paved the way for the slaughter of over 60 million children” and that “abortion is an unthinkable wrong that has wiped out an entire American generation,” suggesting that women rarely sought abortions prior to the ruling. But historians say that’s not true: Abortion has taken place around the world throughout human history. In the 1920s, for example, about 15,000 women died following abortions every year.
According to Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, Mississippi was late to formally ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy. It did not do so until 1952 – half a century after nearly every other state.
Reporter Bobby Harrison contributed to this story.
Incarcerated people at two prisons in the Delta will be able to start earning four-year degrees from Mississippi Valley State University this fall for the first time in more than two decades.
Valley State’s Prison Educational Partnership Program (PEPP) is part of a growing number of colleges providing classes in prison with Second Chance Pell, a federal program that is restoring access to income-based financial aid for incarcerated people.
Seven colleges and nonprofits currently offer for-credit college classes and vocational courses in prisons in Mississippi, but PEPP will be the first program run by a Historically Black college in the state.
Provost Kathie Stromile Golden said that’s significant because while people of any race can participate in the program, in Mississippi, incarcerated people are disproportionately Black. PEPP will be a way for them to form a connection with an institution of the Black community on the outside.
Stromile Golden said she views prison education as ensuring incarcerated students know their communities haven’t forgotten about them.
“Many of the people who are incarcerated are parents and relatives of our students,” Stromile Golden said. “It’s in our best interest to do something like this, because these are the very same people who will come back to our community.”
The university has accepted about 50 incarcerated students for the first semester of classes at Bolivar County Correctional Facility and the Delta Correctional Facility, a prison in Greenwood for people who violated parole. The Second Chance Pell program is limited to incarcerated students with a high school degree or GED diploma who will eventually be released.
Rochelle McGee-Cobbs, an associate professor of criminal justice who will be the director of PEPP, worked with faculty and administration over the course of last year to set up the prison education program. She made multiple trips to the prisons to meet with potential students, bringing paper applications because they didn’t have access to computers to apply online.
The students expressed interest in business administration, computer science and engineering technology courses, so those are the majors that Valley State is planning to offer, McGee-Cobbs said.
She doesn’t know yet what courses PEPP will offer in the fall, because that will depend on the students’ transcripts, which she drove to Bolivar County on a Thursday in June to collect.
“Here at Mississippi Valley State University, regardless of where a student is at when they come in, we try to make sure that we nourish them,” McGee-Cobbs said. “We try to make sure that we cater to the needs of each student.”
Stromile Golden said Valley won’t know until the fall how many faculty are going to teach in the program. Instructors will be paid for travel to the prisons, but the university is working out whether instructors will reach courses as part of their regular load or as an additional class.
Faculty who elect to participate in the program will receive training from Jamii Sisterhood, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of Black people teaching in prisons. Stromile Golden said the training, which is supported by a grant from Project Freedom, will emphasize culturally competent approaches to teaching incarcerated students without adopting a “savior” mindset, which can be demeaning.
“Teaching inside is not the same as teaching outside,” she said.
Valley State’s incarcerated students will have access to the university’s counseling and financial aid offices. Stromile Golden and McGee-Cobbs are also working to partner with re-entry programs to assist students when they are released
College prisons like PEPP, supported by federal financial aid that incarcerated people need to afford classes, were the norm for decades. That changed when President Bill Clinton revoked access to Pell Grants in the 1994 crime bill as a way to look “tough on crime.” Hundreds of college prison programs shut down, cut off from the public funding that made them viable.
Over the last 15 years, as incarceration has become more expensive due to the growing population, lawmakers have started revisiting prison education programs, which studies repeatedly have shown reduce recidivism.
Second Chance Pell, the program Valley State is participating in, was started in 2015 as an “experiment” by President Barack Obama’s administration to give incarcerated people access to Pell Grants. In December 2020, Congress passed a law restoring full access, regardless of a person’s sentence, to Pell Grants.
In Mississippi, Burl Cain, the Department of Corrections commissioner, has supported prison education programs and restoring access to Pell Grants for incarcerated people as “a huge opportunity to cut costs.” Cain has met with Holmes Community College and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, which also participate in the Second Chance Pell program.
“We need this training and skills in the prison to cut costs because not only do classes keep prisoners focused and calm, we need the training so they can train other prisoners to help us run the prison,” he said in an MDOC press release.
The emphasis on prison education as a way to reduce recidivism can also be seen in the guidelines for Second Chance Pell.According to a USDOE fact sheet, participating schools should “only enroll students in postsecondary education and training programs that prepare them for high-demand occupations from which they are not legally barred from entering due to restrictions on formerly incarcerated individuals obtaining any necessary licenses or certifications for those occupations.”
Stromile Golden said that Valley State’s prison education program is also a form of “restorative justice,” an approach to criminal justice that involves addressing how an act of harm has affected a whole community, not just the perpetrator and the victim.
“For African Americans, this is part of our legacy, and we are all steeped in the Baptist church code that says, ‘forgive, forgive, forgive.’ But for the grace of God, easily any of us could be on the other side of it,” she said. “From my perspective, it’s the right thing to do. It’s needed. It’s a win-win for our community.”
Mississippi is one of seven states with midterm congressional party primaries on Tuesday, June 7, as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of the U.S. House and Senate.
Most prognostication is that Mississippi’s four congressional seats — one held by a Democrat and three by Republicans — are not expected to change party control. Only one race, District 4 in south Mississippi, is considered highly competitive, but all incumbents have at least one primary challenger. In District 4, the incumbent faces well-known and well-funded challengers including a county sheriff in the district and a longtime state senator.
Along with Mississippi, primaries will be held Tuesday in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota.
If no candidate gets 50% of the vote on Tuesday, primary runoff elections between the top two vote-getters will be held June 28. The general election, pitting Tuesday’s primary winners against one another, will be Nov. 8.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, and anyone in line by 7 p.m. is still allowed to cast a vote. To find your polling location, call your local circuit clerk. The Secretary of State’s Office has an online polling place locator, but as of late the week before election, a messages said it was not working due to system maintenance and directed people to call local clerks’ offices.
Absentee ballots must be postmarked on or before June 7 and received by local circuit clerks within five business days. Voters are supposed to present a valid ID at their precinct, but can cast an affidavit ballot without one, provided they present one to their county circuit clerk by June 14.
Mississippi congressional candidates:
District 1
Democratic
Hunter Avery
Dianne Black
Republican
Trent Kelly (incumbent)
Mark D. Strauss
District 2
Democratic
Jerry Kerner
Bennie G. Thompson (incumbent)
Republican
Michael Carson
Ronald Eller
Brian Flowers
Stanford Johnson
District 3
Republican
Michael Cassidy
Thomas B. Griffin
Michael Guest (incumbent)
There is no Democratic primary for District 3, with Shuwaski Young running unopposed for the party nomination.
Michael Cassidy, a Republican seeking to unseat incumbent Rep. Michael Guest in Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District in the June 7 primary, has aligned himself with one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates of overthrowing the 2020 presidential election.
Matt Braynard, who has received broad national attention for his radical views on the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack that ensued, has received more than $13,000 as a consultant to the Cassidy campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission website.
Braynard, who worked about five months for the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016 before being fired, has been one of the principal proponents of the myth that if all the legal votes were counted in 2020, Trump would still be president of the United States.
And Braynard, according to multiple national reports, has profited handsomely from that position, with one national outlet describing his work as: “Forrest Gumping his way through the post-election Trump universe.”
His presence in Mississippi highlight the fact that for many Republican primary voters, the 2020 election is still an issue. Most of the congressional candidates who will be on the ballot in Tuesday’s Republican primary in Mississippi have also embraced, to some extent, the claim that voter irregularities or outright fraud cost Trump the election.
All three Republican incumbents — Guest in the 3rd District, Trent Kelly of the 1st District, Steven Palazzo of the 4th — voted to not certify the 2020 presidential election in several key swing states, as did U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Mississippi’s senior U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker was the only Mississippi congressional Republican who voted to certify the election in every state.
Guest, who Cassidy seeks to unseat, was the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation to vote in favor of creating the commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — an attempt to stop the congressional vote certifying the presidential election. Guest, a former prosecutor in central Mississippi, said he voted to create the commission at the request of U.S. Capitol Police.
Cassidy, on his campaign website, has sharply criticized Guest’s vote for the Jan. 6 commission. Guest is considered a heavy favorite in Tuesday’s primary that also includes Republican Thomas Griffin.
Braynard has been active in defending many of the people arrested in the Jan. 6 riots, saying they were engaged only in peaceful protests.
He has been a paid consultant testifying on instances of alleged voter irregularities. Based on testimony, he was paid $150,000 to testify in Wisconsin about the 2020 presidential election and $40,000 for similar testimony in Arizona. Records indicate he also testified post-election in other key swing states — Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Braynard’s data was cited in the infamous lawsuit filed by embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempting to throw out millions of votes in the swing states. The lawsuit, which maintained with no evidence that Biden had “less that one in a quadrillion” chance of winning several states, was joined by Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and numerous Mississippi politicians. It was promptly dismissed by a federal judge.
The Texas Bar Association is currently investigating Paxton related to his filing of the lawsuit.
It could have been happenstance, I suppose — purely coincidental. But I think not.
I believe the NCAA Baseball Committee knew exactly what it was doing when arranging the brackets and providing so many spicy back stories to the regionals at Miami and Hattiesburg.
First and most obvious, we have a 2021 Super Regional rematch in the first round at Miami. We’ve got 2-seed Arizona against 3-seed Ole Miss, while Miami plays the Canisius Golden Griffins in the other matchup. The Golden Griffins nickname deserves an explanation, and we’ll get to that.
Rick Cleveland
The Ole Miss-Arizona game brings together the two teams that went three games in Tucson last June. Remember? Ole Miss lost the first game 9-3, won the second game 12-3 and lost the rubber match 16-3.
What you need to know about that is this: That Arizona team last year was much, much better than this Arizona team. Those Wildcats were a No. 5 national seed that came into the Super Regional with a 44-15 record and having won 11 of its last 13 games. This Arizona team goes to Miami with a 37-23 record and having lost five of its last seven. These Wildcats are beatable.
Those 2021 Wildcats were coached by Jay Johnson, who now coaches at LSU — and we’ll get to that, as well. These Wildcats are coached Chip Hale, a former Arizona baseball standout, also formerly the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks and most recently the third base coach of the Detroit Tigers. He is a rookie college baseball coach.
Much of the intrigue in the Mississippi corner of the NCAA brackets are all the possibilities we would have in the Super Regional that follows next weekend. Think about it. You could have Arizona matched up against its former coach, now at LSU. You could have Ole Miss facing Southern Miss in a rematch of last year’s thoroughly entertaining Oxford Regional.
Or you could have Ole Miss playing LSU in a matchup of two of the oldest and most fierce SEC rivals. If that happens, the Super Regional would be played at Baton Rouge due to LSU’s higher seeding. As if an LSU-Ole Miss series would need any more intrigue, you would have Mike Bianco coaching not only against his alma mater, but also against his son, Drew Bianco. Many believe Bianco’s job would be on the line as inconceivable as that sounds to fans across the nation.
Of course, Miami could throw a damper on all those possibilities. Miami, 39-18 overall, finished a league-best 20-10 in the ACC. That’s impressive, but the Hurricanes are none too impressive in the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately department. They went two and out in the ACC Tournament and have lost six of their last eight games. Go back another couple of weeks and the Hurricanes have lost 10 of their last 18 games. Compare that to Ole Miss, which for all its shortcomings, has won eight of its last 11 games, including winning three straight against LSU at Baton Rouge.
That’s why I say Ole Miss, which looks to have gotten the last available at large NCAA berth, could advance from Miami. It would be no great upset — as there were any upsets in baseball.
And should the Rebels advance, they most likely would play either LSU or Southern Miss —and they beat both on the road late in the season.
And what of those Golden Griffins of Canisius, who will make the journey from Buffalo, N.Y.? They are called the Griffins in honor of a ship. The French explorer La Salle claimed the Mississippi River basin for France, and also explored the Great Lakes Region in a ship called Le Griffon. That doesn’t explain why the Golden Griffins have a mascot named Petey. This may be more than you want to know, but Petey is named for St. Peter Canisius, for whom the college is named.
In Hattiesburg, much of the intrigue concerns tickets. LSU fans would probably fill Pete Taylor Park if they could get the tickets. They can’t, unless they are willing to pay black market prices. (Individual general admission tickets were going for $149 and higher on Stubhub.com Wednesday morning.) Reserved seat tickets presumably would go for much higher.
Each visiting school gets an allotment of 200 tickets. That’s it. Bottom line: We’re going to find out how loyal Southern Miss fans are, because if the Golden Eagles play LSU, as the seedings suggest that they will, Eagle fans could make a killing by selling their tickets to eager LSU fans who follow their baseball Tigers in hordes.
The Pete Taylor Park attendance record was set in May when 6,300 showed for a mid-week Ole Miss-Southern Miss. Capacity for a regional game could be as much as 1,000 lower because of NCAA parameters. The demand for tickets will far exceed the availability.
“Saddle up, let’s go, (LSU fans) better be on the tickets already,” LSU coach Jay Johnson told reporters shortly after the pairings were announced. “I’m sure they will be hard to come by. We want them in there and want them loud and proud as they always are.”
Maybe not this time. We will see. Meanwhile, weather could also be a factor. In Coral Gables, Fla., where a tropical storm approaches, the forecast is for 90% chance of rain Friday and 100% on Sunday. Those Golden Griffins may need a ship to get to the game.
The Hattiesburg Regional forecast is for much drier weather — and hot. Saturday and Sunday afternoon temps could reach the mid-90s.
•••
Hattiesburg Regional Schedule
Friday, June 3 Game 1 — No. 1 Southern Miss vs. No. 4 Army West Point , 1 p.m. (ESPN+) Game 2 — No. 2 LSU vs. No. 3 Kennesaw State, 6 p.m. (ESPN+)
Saturday, June 4 Game 3 — Loser of Game 1 vs. Loser Game 2, 12 p.m. (ESPN+) Game 4 — Winner of Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2, 6 p.m. (ESPN+)
Sunday, June 5 Game 5 — Winner Game 3 vs. Loser Game 4, 1 p.m. (ESPN+) Game 6 — Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5, 6 p.m. (ESPN+)
Monday, June 6 Game 7 — If necessary, 3 p.m. (ESPN+)
Coral Gables Regional Schedule
Friday, June 3 Game 1 — No. 1 Miami vs. No. 4 Canisius , 11 a.m. CT (ESPN+) Game 2 — No. 2 Arizona vs. No. 3 Ole Miss, 6 p.m. (ESPNU)
Saturday, June 4 Game 3 — Loser of Game 1 vs. Loser Game 2, TBD Game 4 — Winner of Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2, TBD
Sunday, June 5 Game 5 — Winner Game 3 vs. Loser Game 4, TBD Game 6 — Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5, TBD
The Mississippi Department of Health announced on Wednesday that the state’s Women, Infants and Children’s Nutrition Program (WIC) is adding new baby formulas to its approved product list to improve access amid the national formula shortage.
Typically, only four types of formula can be purchased with WIC benefits in Mississippi unless an infant gets an exemption through a medical diagnosis. Now, eight additional Enfamil formulas have been added to the list.
The new formulas will be available until Aug. 31. A list of the newly approved formulas can be found here.
There were 84,000 women, children and infants who participated in WIC in Mississippi in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Two additional policy changes were also announced that aim to help WIC participants who use medically prescribed formulas or have purchased formulas that have been recalled.
The USDA Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) waived the requirement for medical documentation to be provided before WIC participants are allowed to change the medical formula their child is prescribed. Instead, they will be able to call the clinic they use to change to another formula that is currently available in stores.
“Nationwide manufacturers’ shortages means we, too, are experiencing constraints in our ability to order medical formula,” Jameshyia Ballard, Director of Vendor Management at the state health department, said in a press release. “These new options for WIC participants are being used to help meet the needs of families.”
FNS has also provided the WIC program with a waiver that will allow people to return any recalled formulas directly to the store they purchased them from in exchange for cash back, store credit, or another formula product.
The baby formula shortage is having a major impact in Mississippi, which has the second-lowest rate of breastfeeding in the nation.
Supply-chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic are one cause of the formula shortage. Manufacturers are struggling to obtain certain ingredients, and labor issues have affected distribution.
The shortage was heavily exacerbated by the recall of three major baby formula brands manufactured by Abbott Nutrition after a probe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found bacterial contamination at one Abbott facility in Sturgis, Mich. At least four babies were hospitalized and two died after consuming contaminated formula, the Food and Drug Administration said. That facility, which is estimated to produce one-fifth of the U.S. baby formula supply, has been shut down since February.
In the first episode of the Health Half Hour series, Marshall Ramsey, a melanoma survivor himself, sat down with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann to talk about his recent melanoma diagnosis and successful surgery.
Private child care providers across Mississippi are scrambling to spend around $150 million, the remainder of their federal stabilization funds, in the next four months.
The centers, which were hit hard by the pandemic as many were forced to stay open while schools closed, may use the large grants broadly on payroll, mortgages and rent, goods like food, classroom equipment, diapers, masks and cleaning supplies, among other expenses.
Though the federal government allows states to spend these child care stabilization funds — $319 million of which it allocated to Mississippi — through September of 2023, the Mississippi Department of Human Services has given child care centers a deadline of September 30, 2022, to expend the funds.
Advocates say the rush might hinder providers from making the best financial decisions for their centers, many of which serve low-income parents and have been cash-strapped for years, resulting in low wages for child care workers.
But centers may also use past operating expenses dating back to the beginning of the pandemic in their reimbursement requests to draw down the funds, called the Child Care Strong grant, in which case they can bank the money and do with it whatever and whenever they wish.
Mississippi Department of Human Services received 1,204 applications for funding and awarded grants to 1,114 centers, over half of which are owned by Black women, MDHS Director Bob Anderson told lawmakers at a Mississippi Democratic Caucus legislative hearing in May.
The Democratic Caucus requested the hearing with MDHS after advocates complained that the agency is not adequately answering questions from providers who want to make sure they spend and record the funds properly so they aren’t hit with demands for repayment — or worse, punishment — next year. The lawmakers said that MDHS has denied requests that it partner with the Mississippi Small Business Development Center program at the University of Mississippi, for example, to help centers with grant accounting.
Anderson told Mississippi Today that any child care provider is free to seek help from the business development center on their own. Asked whether the university’s program has the capability to provide guidance about the specific Child Care Strong grant, he said he didn’t know, but that his agency has provided adequate assistance to its grant recipients.
“Everybody has a perception of whether our technical assistance has been adequate. I think it has been. I don’t think we’ve had a provider that reached out to us that we ignored,” Anderson told Mississippi Today. “Everybody has a different perspective about whether they got enough assistance but I will say, we can’t take every child care provider by the hand and walk them through this grant process and tell them, ‘Yes, you can do A. No, you can’t do B.’ They have to make some business decisions on their own. And that’s beyond the scope of our technical assistance. We’ve laid out the guidelines for how they can use the funds. I mean, that’s on our website.”
Some providers say that MDHS employees who respond to their questions often simply refer them back to the website, which is where their confusion came from in the first place.
“Wherever there’s confusion, there’s misuse, and wherever there’s misuse, there’s jail time,” Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, said in the hearing. “I don’t want to be part of a system, and none of my colleagues do, want to be part of a system where we set somebody up to fail. If these providers are telling you they’re having some problems with some clarity and some understanding, I’m requesting that you try to resolve those issues so we don’t send somebody to jail arbitrarily. $400,000 is a lot of money. If you got a bad accountant, somebody’s finna to do something wrong.”
An agency spokesperson said that the vast majority of providers are on track with their grant spending and are accurately recording their monthly purchases with the agency — which should prevent any surprises on the back end.
“We validate the fact that there are some concerns,” MDHS communications director Mark Jones said. “We hear our providers, but by in large, we see that 86% or 90% of providers are not having these issues.”
As for the tight deadline, which gives centers nine months at most to spend the grant funds, Anderson explained that it took the agency about a year to close out the accounting for $47 million in “booster shot” grants it awarded to centers in 2020. Anderson said the federal government expects a full accounting of how states spent the stabilization funds by the Sept. 30, 2023, federal deadline. Learning from the past, Anderson said, the agency is giving itself a full year to conduct the paperwork.
“The Sept. 30, 2022, deadline gives you a year to be able to do what you need to do for the federal government. My question is, why is it that the reporting period is longer than the time you’re giving providers?” Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, asked in the hearing.
The federal stabilization grants, which Mississippi calls Child Care Strong grants, are intended to provide relief to centers by paying for unexpected business expenses due to the pandemic. The grants are funded by the American Rescue Plan Act signed in March 2021. The state opened up grant applications nine months later in December. MDHS has said it took that long to review guidance from the federal government so it could administer the money within the guidelines. The application period closed at the end of January.
The act also allotted Mississippi nearly $200 million in additional funding for the annual Child Care Development Fund block grant discretionary fund, which may be used to help more low-income children get into child care through vouchers or to improve center quality.
To ensure every center got the amount they were eligible to receive based on a formula MDHS created that mostly accounted for the center’s size, the agency allocated an additional $35 million from the discretionary fund for a total of $354 million in stabilization grants it awarded. Centers received grants ranging from $21,000 to $640,000, which could represent as much as a year’s budget for a center. Through April, MDHS says it has mailed over $158 million in payments to centers.
In a press release MDHS issued Thursday, the agency quoted a child care provider in Hattiesburg, who said, “These funds are providing numerous working parents the assistance to receive free quality childcare in a safe and nurturing environment fostering developmental, academic, social/emotional skills and mental and physical health with qualified and adequate staffing with the proper PPE, support, classroom materials, and environment improvements.”
In the release, Anderson said the agency is also exploring other child care expansion ideas.
“The pandemic has tested the resilience of Mississippi’s child care providers,” he said. “As centers continue to provide services critical to the growth of our workforce and preparation of children for k-12 success, MDHS will work with providers to sustain the industry beyond the current round of Child Care Strong,” he said.
The Child Care Strong grant allows centers to submit reimbursement for expenditures dating back to the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, which advocates say presents a sophisticated accounting exercise for centers who may not have a financial manager on staff. Providers were not permitted to use the money to hire an accountant.
Kassandra Fisher, owner of Agape Love Learning Center in Greenwood, said MDHS’s format for submitting monthly financial reports has changed several times, creating confusion on how the agency wants providers to record their purchases each month.
“They had enough months to have an accurate system where we could have more clarity on how to submit everything. And it seems like we’re trying to learn as we go,” Fisher said. “And providers are already stressed with the time they gave us, the timeframe, we don’t need any more stress.”
Fisher, whose center has received $188,000, has used the money to purchase new equipment and furniture, air purifiers, personal protective equipment, and make building upgrades and repairs. Fisher has been in business 12 years, she said, so many of her classrooms are outdated.
Other providers are worried that if they use the funds on building repairs, contractors might still be working on their centers past the deadline due to delays in construction or items being on backorder. Anderson said in the hearing that work allocated before the September 2022 deadline but not expended until after, such as in the contractor scenario, are permitted, but providers expressed confusion over the explanation, which they say contradicts what they’ve been told.
Suspicion towards the welfare agency from child care providers has lingered during the ongoing fallout of a massive fraud scheme. More than two years ago, the State Auditor’s Office arrested six people, including the former MDHS director John Davis, for taking money from the federal anti-poverty program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Davis continues to maintain his innocence, while the court has delayed his trial several times. Four others who pleaded guilty to several felonies ranging from conspiracy to fraud and bribery have yet to be sentenced to prison as officials continue investigating. Forensic auditors determined the agency and its grantees misspent at least $77 million.
Considering the agency’s recent history, Rep. Hines said it should be doing everything it can to help current grantees follow the rules.
“That agency should be holding those hands to make sure we don’t have the same kind of debacle that took place with the TANF funds,” Hines told Mississippi Today. “They should welcome holding people’s hands to guide them through this process so we don’t be embarrassed like that ever again.”
The agency is attempting to claw back a total of roughly $24 million through a civil suit — though most of the defendants likely do not possess the money to settle or pay on any potential judgements.
The known TANF scheme occurred during 2016-2019, but around the same time, from about 2013-2018, child care providers were screaming about a separate disaster: the department didn’t approve a single new child care voucher from the federal Child Care Development Fund for five years. TANF and CCDF, two federal block grants U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awards to each state’s welfare agency, interact because typically parents receiving TANF automatically receive the voucher, but many more Mississippi parents qualify for the CCDF child care certificate, which has a higher income threshold than TANF.
“With all the fraud that happened, all the years we went through without getting approved a certificate, with parents being on waiting lists, and now we’re finding out why, then I feel like our providers should be compensated,” Fisher said. “All this money they’re talking about they want to regain, going after a lot of people, what about the providers who suffered during that time? What kind of compensation can you offer those providers, you know, for those years that we really struggled and wondered why funding wasn’t there for our children and for the communities that needed it?”
Mississippi Department of Human Services and its auditors have never explained how the agency’s sprawling fraud scheme and misspending of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds may have impacted the child care program, and a similar forensic analysis of federal child care funds has not taken place. Today, MDHS says it spends 85% of its CCDF on child care vouchers — the federal government only requires states to spend 75% on certificates — and that the agency does not have a waitlist. But parents still face issues during the application and redetermination, the antiquated process the agency uses to determine parents are still eligible for the benefit.
While the state positions itself and taxpayers as the victim of theft, Fisher thinks about the low-income parents and what they lost because of corruption inside the agency.
“The system failed. They failed the providers. They failed the low-income parents. And we’re talking about funding that’s misused, but what compensation are they going to put in place?” Fisher told Mississippi Today. “What if a parent was trying to finish school and they couldn’t? You know what I’m saying? It’s some years that we struggled real hard.”
“And now you’re rushing us to spend funding that was provided by the federal government, not the state,” she continued. “Then, my thing is, you’re not being fair. You’re not being fair.”
The MHSAA baseball championships are in the books, now the attention turns to the NCAA Baseball Tournament, where Ole Miss and Southern Miss are both vying for that elusive trip to Omaha. Plus, the Cleveland boys discuss the proposed new SEC football schedule formats under discussion at this week’s summer meetings in Destin.
