Where there’s uncertainty in the pandemic, poverty is a constant

The pandemic has both offered a short reprieve and exacerbated existing turmoil for Mississippi families living in deep poverty, whose complicated circumstances are not addressed by narrow relief.

By Anna Wolfe | August 6, 2020

“I don’t understand how you’re going to continue to pay the rent,” said Keri Marshall’s landlord, his voice coming through the speakerphone on her Android.  

An hour earlier on July 28, Marshall, wearing blue skinny jeans, a grey T-shirt and her dark brown hair slicked back in a ponytail, was standing in a Lee County Justice Court room.

A judge told the 34-year-old single mother of four she had three days to pack up her belongings and move out of the three-bedroom Verona home where she and her children lived with her mother Dorothy Meadows.

The property company had evicted Meadows over a light bill, which was in the company’s name and went unpaid for months, racking up nearly $2,000 in debt. The landlord said the tenant should have switched the utility over to her name. Plus, no one but Meadows was supposed to be living there, per the lease. But by the time the 74-year-old Meadows was set to attend court at the end of June, she was too ill to appear.

She died of a heart attack on June 29, leaving Marshall and her children powerless in the eviction and reliant on the goodwill of a businessman.

The big brown recliner chair where Meadows had spent much of her time recently sits under the awning out front of the house now, collecting dirt.

“Everything I know, I learned from her,” said Marshall, who relied heavily on her mother for emotional, childrearing and financial support. “The only thing she never got a chance to teach me was how to be on my own, how to make it on my own.”

The economic fallout of COVID-19 has thrown many families into uncertainty, especially as relief dwindles in the 20th week of the pandemic and with Congress yet to pass a new stimulus package.

But these conditions are all too familiar for families like the Marshalls, who were already living on the edge of homelessness in the most impoverished state in the nation before shutdowns began in March. In Marshall’s northeast Mississippi town, nearly a third of people live in poverty, compared to about one-fifth statewide.

Landlords typically require proof of income from tenants, which helps ensure landowners, who may have mortgages to pay, will not sustain missed payments. But that requirement also presents an issue for renters with nontraditional employment or who struggle to maintain a job. This is particularly true for single parents and during a shaky economy and can create a cycle of evictions, damaging the tenant’s credit and further entrenching them in poverty.

For some of these families, the pandemic has offered a short reprieve through eviction moratoriums, stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits. And yet, the pandemic’s devastating impacts on health, social life and the larger economy has exacerbated their turmoil in other ways.

Lacking a high school diploma, Marshall said she’s having trouble finding not only stable employment, but a safe, open childcare center that is accepting new kids. That’s only when her day is not dominated by trying to keep a roof over her family.

Three of Marshall’s young children listened from the cement steps outside their apartment, a pale-blue bungalow, as their mother tried to convince landlord Johnoson Crutchfield of her position. “Mr. John, I’m not struggling. I’m really not,” she said.

Marshall, who last worked a part-time job at Burger King for a short stint, began drawing Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits in the last three weeks after telling the state unemployment office she was jobless due to the pandemic.

With the $600 weekly boost in benefits, Marshall has pulled more income, about $3,000 in July, than ever before. She had the money to pay August rent, she explained to Crutchfield. She could afford to stay another 30 days, at least.

“In the process, I’m trying to figure out where I can place my kids so I could go to work,” she told him. “If I go to work, I don’t have anybody to watch them. I can’t leave them by theyselves.”

He agreed to let her stay, even though Marshall’s name is not on the existing lease. To be sure, he didn’t have to do that. But Marshall’s unemployment benefits, which shrunk to under $100 a week at the end of July, will run out eventually — hence Crutchfield’s hesitancy.

“Basically, I’m still sinking. It’s not even keeping me above water,” Marshall said of the drop in benefits. “I just went straight under.”

Marshall said she spent her recent influx of cash through unemployment on past due bills — not just for utilities and cable, but also payments on the rent-to-own television and stove on which her mother had fallen behind — and back-to-school clothing for her growing children. What’s left isn’t more than about $5, she said. And she doesn’t have much family help: Two of her children’s fathers are incarcerated, and the other stopped checking in.

“I’m just living day by day,” Marshall said. “My mom always told me to never plan ahead because if you plan ahead, everything will not turn out the way it’s supposed to be. I literally learned that; I thought she was playing when she said that.”

Marshall wanted to work in the nursing field ever since she was a little girl, and she said she got close to securing her Certified Nursing Assistant credentials through Job Corps in 2004. But the program kicked her out when officers caught her friend shoplifting while they were together at Walmart.

On top of raising four children, she’s held a couple of short-term jobs — from food service gigs to factory positions through a temp agency to hairdressing for cash — every other year or so since then. At times, without her own vehicle, she’d often catch a ride with coworkers, and if they left the job, she’d have to quit too.

Marshall catches on quickly when someone demonstrates a skill or task, but she struggles with reading comprehension — the main barrier to completing her GED.

While the number of jobless Mississippians spiked from about 70,000 at the beginning of 2020 to nearly 104,000 by June, three months into the pandemic, a lesser regarded statistic shows another 86,000 have simply fallen out of the labor force altogether in that time, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Driven in part by the state’s unequal education system, low education attainment and lagging economic development, Mississippi has historically had one of the lowest labor force participation rates.

In June, Mississippi had the smallest workforce in the nation with just 52% of non-institutionalized working-age people in the state either working or looking for a job. The national average was 62%.

A statewide, multi-million dollar, federally funded program called Families First for Mississippi was purportedly designed to help people just like Marshall, who are often disconnected from the workforce, gain useful life skills like parenting, financial literacy and workplace etiquette. But earlier this year, the state auditor revealed that its creators had allegedly perpetuated the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history and the program ceased completely.

Now the state agency hasn’t retooled the welfare program to offer more cash assistance to families struggling to meet basic needs, the way at least one neighboring state has, during the pandemic.

Instead, Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Wednesday the creation of a new workforce development program to help people who have been laid off or otherwise economically damaged and are receiving unemployment benefits. The state is not conducting the job training itself, but is offering to reimburse companies who agree to hire and train new employees by 75% of the person’s wages during the training period, as long as they pay at least $15-an-hour.

Human Services also offers employment services called Skills2Work to low-income people who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which essentially offers grants to existing work training programs in the community. But a representative at the DHS office in Lee County, where Marshall lives, said their work program has been on hold since the start of the pandemic.

Marshall is considering getting back a night shift at the lawnmower manufacturing facility in town. That way, she can stay with her kids during the day while they conduct their schooling from home, like thousands of other Mississippi children will do this school year due to the virus. Marshall said they’ll use her old cellphones to complete their work. She’d have to find someone who can babysit during the night. Sleep is barely part of the plan.

While the nation is bracing for an avalanche of evictions in coming months if Congress does not appropriate more rental assistance funds, landlords and rental managers told Mississippi Today they have been trying to work with people who have faced hardships due to COVID-19. Crutchfield, Marshall’s landlord and owner of Grab The Map properties, waived late fees in April for his tenants.

Those who have faced evictions since the state moratorium lifted on June 1, Crutchfield told Mississippi Today, “by and large are people who were not paying prior to coronavirus.”

“The people who were struggling before the virus are the people who are struggling now,” he said.

Officials from the Mississippi Center for Justice, Mississippi Center for Legal Services and the University of Mississippi’s Housing Clinic confirmed to Mississippi Today that they haven’t seen the wave of COVID-related evictions this summer that they might have anticipated, but they believe it’s coming.

These urgent circumstances could be temporarily relieved through policies — such as extended unemployment benefit enhancements, more rental assistance funding and eviction moratoriums — that Congress is hashing out in the coming stimulus package.

But the narrow relief proposals do not address longstanding barriers to economic mobility for thousands of Mississippians living in poverty, like Marshall, who face limited job prospects and an increasingly unaffordable housing market.

One local housing expert says the policy that would get closest to alleviating these conditions in Mississippi is universal basic income, similar to the $1,200 stimulus check working people received in the spring — only monthly for every adult. Jackson is the home to one such basic income pilot program.

“Nobody wants to be behind on their rent. Nobody wants to be chased by the utility companies and have their water shut off, and their lights shut off and their gas shut off. That is not desirable for anybody,” Scott Spivey, executive director of the Mississippi Home Corporation, told Mississippi Today. “Giving people the resources to where they don’t have to live in that situation would be a huge windfall.”

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PHILADELPHIA — Neshoba Central Middle School Principal Cody Killen walked down the school’s quiet halls Wednesday morning before entering into Kristian Swearingen’s English class during the first day of school. Although he was wearing a mask, it was obvious that he was excited. 

“First of all, I’ve missed you all,” Killen said. “When we let out for spring break, never did I think that we would see you all at the end of the year, or starting the school year off like this. It is not because we want to, but it’s because we want to work hard to do everything that we can do to continue to have school on campus. That means so much to me.”

The Neshoba County School District was one of many schools to open their doors for a new school year this week.

 “This won’t last forever,” Killen said. “I’ll be honest, It’s going to last for a while, but we will get through this.” 

Earlier this week, Gov Tate Reeves issued an executive order to delay school start dates for grades 7-12 in some COVID hotspots. Districts in Bolivar, Coahoma, Forrest, George, Hinds, Panola, Sunflower and Washington counties cannot open for those grades until Aug. 17.

According to the Stephanie Peebles, the middle school’s nurse, the school has been strictly following the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines to protect the students and staff.

“Of course we have a lot of parents and students who are nervous, but we want to show the parents that we are here to protect their children, do the best we can, and we are going to love them up and welcome them back,” Peebles said. 

As of August 6, the CDC has reported 63,444 confirmed cases and 1,804 deaths in Mississippi. Neshoba County alone has 1,278 confirmed cases and 91 deaths. The county has the second highest number of deaths behind Hinds County, which has 116. 

Here are images from Neshoba Central Middle School’s first day of in-person class. 

The post Gallery | First Day of School for Neshoba County appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Neshoba County School District students get board school buses after the district’s first day of school on Wednesday, August 5, 2020.

The State Board of Education voted on Thursday to give an optional 10-day waiver to school districts that have either chosen or were ordered to delay their start dates. 

Under state law, districts must complete 180 days of school by June 30 each year, which is why school usually begins in August in Mississippi. This waiver will allow affected school districts to only have to complete 170 days.

On Tuesday, Gov. Tate Reeves issued a mandate ordering school districts in eight counties considered hot spots for the coronavirus: Bolivar, Coahoma, Forrest, George, Hinds, Panola, Sunflower and Washington, to push the start of school back until August 17 for students in 7th-12th grades. The order affects 21 school districts, or about seven percent of students. 

“This is not requiring 170 days. They [school districts] can do 190 days if they want. But if they need 10 days to work with because of the delay, that’s what I want to bring up,” said Jason Dean, Chair of the State Board of Education.

Dean said that this option is only available to school districts that either affected by the governor’s executive order, or who had to delay their published start dates. Schools that started this week or that plan on starting the next week are not eligible for the waiver. 

“Today one-third of our districts are starting and by Monday [August 10] two-thirds of our districts are starting. If that was your established date, this does not apply to you. If you’re one of the districts in the governor’s eight counties that was included in the executive order or you independently chose to move your start date, this applies to you,” Dean said. 

He also said that he foresees this waiver affecting teacher pay, administrator pay and hourly employees, but that will be addressed at the board’s August 27 meeting.

Most school districts are opening this month — two opened in July and 10 plan to open in September.

Though many districts opened this week or plan to later this month, several groups, including the Mississippi Association of Educators, Mississippi State Medical Association and the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics have each advocated for a delayed start until at least Sept. 1.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

GOP gubernatorial candidate Tate Reeves speaks to media after voting at Liberty Baptist Church during the GOP runoff elections.

House Speaker Philip Gunn and Pro Tem Jason White filed a lawsuit in Hinds County Chancery Court Wednesday afternoon challenging the constitutionality of partial vetoes issued by Gov. Tate Reeves of two bills lawmakers passed earlier this year.

The lawsuit filed by Gunn and White — the two most powerful leaders in the House — regarded bills they championed and passed earlier this year that funded the state’s public education operations and provided federal coronavirus relief money to health care providers.

Reeves blasted the lawsuit on social media on Wednesday and addressed it at a press conference. In a Facebook post, he said he had vetoed “payoffs for friends of favored House members.” He called the lawsuit a “power grab by some members of the House” and said much of his vetoing was to protect taxpayers from “pet projects stuck in a bill by a legislator” and “earmarks.”

Reeves accused the Republican-led House of letting “liberal Republicans” and Democrats run the show. He said he’s already heard from some Republican lawmakers opposed to the leadership’s lawsuit.

Gunn, White and other lawmakers declined comment on the lawsuit on Wednesday.

The state Constitution gives the governor the authority to issue partial vetoes of appropriations or budget bills, but multiple rulings by the Mississippi Supreme Court have placed strict limits on that authority.

The courts have generally said that the governor could not partially veto conditions or individual projects placed in appropriations bills. A partial veto has not been upheld by the judiciary in recent history.

For more than 100 years, the courts have ruled “the governor is not authorized to pick and choose various portions of bills to veto as Gov. Reeves has done here,” the lawsuit claimed.

Less than 10 years after the Constitution was ratified, the state Supreme Court ruled that there were strict limits on the partial veto authority, according to the lawsuit. The suit maintained that the courts have ruled the partial veto authority could be used if the Legislature adopted an “omnibus” appropriations bill  and then only to veto sections of the bill, but not individual line items.

The fight over the partial vetoes is the latest in a long line of disagreements this year — the first of a new four-year term — between Reeves and fellow Republican members of the legislative leadership. They have fought over who had spending authority of $1.25 billion in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds and on various other issues.

On July 8, Reeves vetoed most of the funding going to local school districts because he said the Legislature did not fund a program providing bonuses to the faculty of top performing and improving schools — a program critics say is racially and socioeconomically inequitable. Before the veto, legislative leaders said not funding the program was a mistake and that it could be corrected by the Legislature without the need for a veto.

The school districts recently received their first state funding installment of the new fiscal year based on a letter Reeves sent to the state fiscal officer authorizing the release of the funds. He said he had the authority to release the funds based on an official opinion issued by former Attorney General Jim Hood saying the schools must be funded regardless of whether there is a legislative appropriation because the Constitution mandates a public education system.

At a Wednesday afternoon news conference, he defended his vetoes but did not address the merits of the lawsuit. Reeves said one item he vetoed — $2 million awarded to a shuttered hospital — was a “pet project for an individual legislator.” The hospital is in the district of House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia.

“With the CARES Act money … there were several projects that quite frankly were earmarks, one of which was an earmark for a hospital in Tate County — a hospital that hasn’t been open in two years,” Reeves said. “Not only have they not treated any COVID patients, they haven’t treated any patients at all during the life of this pandemic.”

The bill stated the hospital would receive the funds — like other Mississippi hospitals will — if it reopened this year and began to treat coronavirus patients. The Tate County Board of Supervisors has been in negotiations to reopen the hospital.

Reeves said another item he vetoed for $6 million to Federally Qualified Health Centers also appeared to be earmarked “for a hand selected few FQHCs to do a disparity study” while leaving other centers out.

Beyond the lawsuit, legislative leaders are also considering calling themselves back into session to consider overriding some of his vetoes.

Reeves noted that lawmakers’ ability to call themselves back into session is very limited per the Legislature’s own resolution.

“I think if you actually read the order that passed the House and Senate, it’s very clear they can bring themselves back for any COVID-19 related issues, for a total of six days between now and the end of October,” Reeves said.

Otherwise, Reeves has sole authority to call lawmakers back in special session and he said he is reluctant to do so now for lawmakers’ own health and wellbeing because of an outbreak of COVID-19 at the Capitol that infected about 50 lawmakers and staff in July.

“I am not willing to play political games at the expense of the public health and the safety of the men and women who go into that (Capitol) building across the street,” Reeves said. “A lot of them are friends of mine and a lot of them are really good people.”

Reeves said he knows of at least one lawmaker — whom he did not name — that tested positive very recently.

“We certainly want them to come back for a special session and we have to bring them back in a special session,” Reeves said. “… But obviously this lawsuit complicates things a little bit … they chose to sue us rather than work this out, which I don’t think is a very wise decision.”

Reeves didn’t directly answer media questions as to why it would be safe for schools to reopen, and for bars and other businesses statewide to be open as the number of new cases soars, but not for the Legislature to return in session. He noted that many schools have detailed reopening plans and safety protocols and that young children appear less likely to transmit COVID-19 or to die from it if infected.

“We’ve dealt with everything in 2020 from tornadoes, to a prison crisis, to a state agency head from the previous administration being indicted, to the third-largest tornado in American history,” Reeves said. “… We’ve dealt with just about everything you can imagine, so dealing with yet another power grab by some members of the House is not all that surprising to me. But I never would have guessed it a year or so ago.”

The House leaders are being represented by Madison County attorney Andy Taggart, who was chief of staff for Gov. Kirk Fordice in the 1990s when his efforts at partial vetoes was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. At the time, Taggart advocated for the governor having much broader partial veto authority.

The lawsuit is seeking a quick resolution of the issue since the CARES Act mandates the funds be spent this calendar year.

Reeves said: “There’s a small group in the House that only wants to pick fights with me—some liberal Republicans who’ve joined forces with liberal House Dems. They run the show these days: Democrats and some left-leaning GOP politicians. (Republican) Trey Lamar and (Democratic caucus leader) Robert Johnson lead that crew around.”

“They don’t have the votes to override the vetoes, so this is their Hail Mary,” Reeves continued. “I wish they wouldn’t waste your money and pull us away from all the crises we’re managing to deal with their nonsense, but it’s their favorite game.”

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MRA athletics

Mississippi’s private schools, such as Madison Ridgeland Academy and Presbyterian Christian, shown here from a 2019 game, plan to start the 2020 season on time in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mississippi currently has the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the U.S., but the state’s private high schools plan to play organized football on August 13, a week from Thursday.

The Mid-South Association of Independent Schools (MAIS), the governing body of Mississippi private schools, will open its regular season on Thursday, August 20, but several private school teams around the state are scheduled to be involved in football jamborees with multiple teams August 13 and 14.

Said Shane Blanton, MAIS executive director in a phone conversation Wednesday morning: “We’re excited to get started. We think we have a very good plan. We’re trying our best to do what’s right for our children.”

Mississippi’s public high schools have delayed the start of the football season until Sept. 4. The Southeastern Conference has delayed its start until Sept. 26. The Southwestern Athletic Conference has postponed football season until the spring.

Rick Cleveland

Across the nation, changes to existing football plans are announced nearly daily. The University of Connecticut (UConn), which had been scheduled to play Ole Miss before the SEC went to a conference games-only schedule, announced the cancellation of its 2020 football season early Wednesday.

Louisiana’s public high schools Wednesday delayed the start of the 2020 season until October.

In Mississippi, Greenwood-Leflore County Schools have  joined Greenville High School in canceling fall sports. Greenville’s school board made the unanimous decision last week. Greenwood-Leflore’s school board voted 3-2 Tuesday. Greenwood-Leflore high schools include Greenwood, Leflore County and Amanda Elzy high schools. That list could grow. Several other school systems around the state are known to be weighing options.

Gov. Tate Reeves has made no executive order concerning the playing of football, but said in his scheduled press conference Tuesday, “Nobody likes high school sports as much as I do, but I am going to focus on the education of our students first and foremost. There are several sports at the high school level that can be safely played. I know this for sure: I do not envision any scenario in which there can be a large crowd in the stands to watch those games.”

At the same press conference, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said his chief fear would be for the fans in the stands, rather than the players on the field.

“There is a risk for the players,” Dobbs said. “That said, there aren’t a lot of 65-year-olds taking the field out there. But there would be in stands, and that could promulgate community spread in areas. So, if we’re going to play football in the next couple of weeks, the stands would need to be nearly empty.”

Following the press conference, asked directly about the wisdom of playing football, given Mississippi’s COVID-19 numbers presently, Dobbs responded, “I just wouldn’t do it. Not now.”

Shane Blanton

MAIS chief Blanton said his organization has a plan for football attendance.

“For at least the first weekend, we are looking at 25 percent of capacity,” Blanton said. “We hope we can raise that to 50 percent and perhaps beyond that as the state’s numbers improve. In Alabama, they are going 100 percent from the beginning.”

As for how the crowd size limitations will be enforced Blanton said, “That will be left up to the individual schools.”

Traditional rivalry games such as those that involved Jackson Prep, Jackson Academy and Madison-Ridgeland Academy routinely pack the stadiums. MRA is scheduled to play at Jackson Academy on Sept. 4. A reasonable question: How will it be decided who can attend and who can’t? Better yet, who is going to tell grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles: No, you can’t come in?

Mississippi’s current statewide restrictions limit gatherings to 10 people indoors and 20 people outdoors and call for social distancing of six feet of separation between persons who do not live in the same household. Any football game will exceed those “gathering” limits on the playing field alone, not to mention the sidelines or the stands. As for the six feet of separation, you can’t block or tackle from six feet away.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Mississippi House speaker Philip Gunn, center, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, right, talk after Gov. Tate Reeves press conference at the State of Mississippi Woolfolk Building in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, May 7, 2020.

Members of the Mississippi House are expected to file a lawsuit, as early as Wednesday, challenging Gov. Tate Reeves’ partial veto of a bill spending federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Legislative sources said lawmakers also are considering reconvening in Jackson as early as next week to consider overriding some of Reeves’ five vetoes he issued in early July, including his partial veto of the K-12 education budget.

The looming lawsuit and return to Jackson sets up yet another clash between Republican legislative leaders and the Republican governor.

Earlier this year, Reeves sparred with House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, over who should get spending authority of $1.2 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds. The Legislature prevailed. Lawmakers also bucked the will of Reeves when they voted to remove the state flag in June.

Reeves’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Legislators have been waiting for Reeves to call them back in special session to deal at least with Reeves’ partial veto of the education budget and to pass a budget bill for the Department of Marine Resources. DMR was not funded before the Legislature left July 1 because of a disagreement between the House and Senate over Reeves’ authority to spend millions in Gulf restoration funds.

The Constitution gives the governor sole authority to call a special session. But this year legislators passed a resolution giving Gunn and Hosemann the authority to reconvene the Legislature to take up COVID-19 issues. Once in session, if approved by two-thirds of the members, legislators could take up essentially any issue. A two-thirds vote also would be required for any veto override.

There has been speculation about whether Reeves’ partial veto of a bill appropriating federal funds to hospitals and other healthcare providers is constitutional.

The state Constitution gives a governor some line-item veto power, but the parameters of that power have been debated for years and the subject of legal challenges in past administrations. The state Supreme Court has ruled that those line-item veto powers are limited.

“I would want to more thoroughly research it … but when I read the bill with that in  mind, it seemed the veto  was unconstitutional based on the latest precedent in the Leflore County private prisons case,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory. Bryan was referring to an early 2000s case when the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a partial by then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove of money going to private prisons.

Bryan, chair of the Senate Public Health Committee, was one of the key architects in the final days of June as legislators finished their work and adjourned after passing the bill to spend $130 million in funds to help health care providers, such as hospitals, and other entities, such as food pantries, with their work fighting the coronavirus. The money was part of $1.25 billion the state received in the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.

Reeves vetoed $2 million lawmakers directed to the shuttered North Oak Regional Medical Center in Senatobia and $6 million earmarked to the MAGnet Community Health Center to study and try to combat health disparities, such as combating the high impact COVID-19 has inflicted on the African American community. The spending was part of a $130 million bill directing CARES Act money to Mississippi health care and hospitals.

Reeves argued the hospital should not receive the money because it was closed and thus not dealing with coronavirus patients. He also said he was not familiar with the group receiving the funds to try to curb health disparities.

The money for the Senatobia hospital would only be available if reopened before the end of the year. The hospital is located in the district of Republican House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, who over the years has been at odds with Reeves over numerous issues, dating back to Reeves’ terms as lieutenant governor.

In the early 2000s, Musgrove vetoed a portion of the appropriations bill for the Department of Corrections that provided money to operate a private prison in Leflore County.

The court, in a 5-2 ruling, said the governor could not veto restrictions on how those funds were spent. In a complex legal opinion, the Court ruled that Musgrove would have had to vetoed the entire section of the bill providing funds for the Greenville prison.

Bryan was a plaintiff in the 1990s when the Supreme Court ruled then-Gov. Kirk Foridice unconstitutionally vetoed portions of both appropriations and bond bills issuing long-term debt for the state.

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