OurTupelo

by Justin Glowacki  with contributions from Rasheed Ambrose, Javion Henry, McKenna Klamm, Matt Martin and Aidan Tarrant

BILOXI – On Feb. 1, Memorial Health System officially took over Merit Health Biloxi, solidifying its position as the dominant healthcare provider in the region. According to Fitch Ratings, Memorial now controls more than 85% of the local health care market.

This isn’t Memorial’s first hospital acquisition. In 2019, it took over Stone County Hospital and expanded services. Memorial considers that transition a success and expects similar results in Biloxi.

However, health care experts caution that when one provider dominates a market, it can lead to higher prices and fewer options for patients.

Expanding specialty care and services

One of the biggest benefits of the acquisition, according to Kristian Spear, the new administrator of Memorial Hospital Biloxi, will be access to Memorial’s referral network.

By joining Memorial’s network, Biloxi patients will have access to more services, over 40 specialties and over 100 clinics.

“Everything that you can get at Gulfport, you will have access to here through the referral system,” Spear said.

One of the first improvements will be the reopening of the Radiation Oncology Clinic at Cedar Lake, which previously shut down due to “availability shortages,” though hospital administration did not expand on what that entailed.

“In the next few months, the community will see a difference,” Spear said. “We’re going to bring resources here that they haven’t had.”

Beyond specialty care, Memorial is also expanding hospital services and increasing capacity. Angela Benda, director of quality and performance improvement at Memorial Hospital Biloxi, said the hospital is focused on growth.

“We’re a 153-bed hospital, and we average a census of right now about 30 to 40 a day. It’s not that much, and so, the plan is just to grow and give more services,” Benda said. “So, we’re going to expand on the fifth floor, open up more beds, more admissions, more surgeries, more provider presence, especially around the specialties like cardiology and OB-GYN and just a few others like that.”

For patient Kenneth Pritchett, a Biloxi resident for over 30 years, those changes couldn’t come soon enough.

Pritchett, who was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, received treatment at Merit Health Biloxi. He currently sees a cardiologist in Cedar Lake, a 15-minute drive on the interstate. He says having a cardiologist in Biloxi would make a difference.

“Yes, it’d be very helpful if it was closer,” Pritchett said. “That’d be right across the track instead of going on the interstate.”

Beyond specialty services and expanded capacity, Memorial is upgrading medical equipment and renovating the hospital to improve both function and appearance. As far as a timeline for these changes, Memorial said, “We are taking time to assess the needs and will make adjustments that make sense for patient care and employee workflow as time and budget allow.”

Unanswered questions: insurance and staffing

As Memorial Health System takes over Merit Health Biloxi, two major questions remain:

1. Will patients still be covered under the same insurance plans?
2. Will current hospital staff keep their jobs?

Insurance Concerns

Memorial has not finalized agreements with all insurance providers and has not provided a timeline for when those agreements will be in place.

In a statement, the hospital said:

“Memorial recommends that patients contact their insurance provider to get their specific coverage questions answered. However, patients should always seek to get the care they need, and Memorial will work through the financial process with the payers and the patients afterward.”

We asked Memorial Health System how the insurance agreements were handled after it acquired Stone County Hospital. They said they had “no additional input.”

What about hospital staff?

According to Spear, Merit Health Biloxi had around 500 employees.

“A lot of the employees here have worked here for many, many years. They’re very loyal. I want to continue that, and I want them to come to me when they have any concerns, questions, and I want to work with this team together,” Spear said.

She explained that there will be a 90-day transitional period where all employees are integrated into Memorial Health System’s software.

“Employees are not going to notice much of a difference. They’re still going to come to work. They’re going to do their day-to-day job. Over the next few months, we will probably do some transitioning of their computer system. But that’s not going to be right away.”

The transition to new ownership also means Memorial will evaluate how the hospital is operated and determine if changes need to be made.

“As we get it and assess the different workflows and the different policies, there will be some changes to that over time. Just it’s going to take time to get in here and figure that out.”

During this 90-day period, Erin Rosetti, Communications Manager at Memorial Health System said, “Biloxi employees in good standing will transition to Memorial at the same pay rate and equivalent job title.”

Kent Nicaud, President and CEO of Memorial Health System, said in a statement that the hospital is committed to “supporting our staff and ensuring they are aligned with the long-term vision of our health system.”

What research says about hospital consolidations

While Memorial is promising improvements, larger trends in hospital mergers raise important questions.

Research published by the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that research into hospital consolidations reported increased prices anywhere from 3.9% to 65%, even among nonprofit hospitals.

The impact on patient care is mixed. Some studies suggest merging hospitals can streamline services and improve efficiency. Others indicate mergers reduce competition, which can drive up costs without necessarily improving care.

When asked about potential changes to the cost of care, hospital leaders declined to comment until after negations with insurance companies are finalized, but did clarify Memorial’s “prices are set.”

“We have a proven record of being able to go into institutions and transform them,” said Angie Juzang, Vice President of Marketing and Community Relations at Memorial Health System.

When Memorial acquired Stone County Hospital, it expanded the emergency room to provide 24/7 emergency room coverage and renovated the interior.

When asked whether prices increased after the Stone County acquisition, Memorial responded:

“Our presence has expanded access to health care for everyone in Stone County and the surrounding communities. We are providing quality healthcare, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.”

The response did not directly address whether prices went up — leaving the question unanswered.

The bigger picture: Hospital consolidations on the rise

According to health care consulting firm Kaufman Hall, hospital mergers and acquisitions are returning to pre-pandemic levels and are expected to increase through 2025.

Hospitals are seeking stronger financial partnerships to help expand services and remain stable in an uncertain health care market.

Source: Kaufman Hall M&A Review

Proponents of hospital consolidations argue mergers help hospitals operate more efficiently by:

• Sharing resources.
• Reducing overhead costs.
• Negotiating better supply pricing.

However, opponents warn few competitors in a market can:

• Reduce incentives to lower prices.
• Slow wage increases for hospital staff.
• Lessen the pressure to improve services.

Leemore Dafny, PhD, a professor at Harvard and former deputy director for health care and antitrust at the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, has studied hospital consolidations extensively.

In testimony before Congress, she warned: “When rivals merge, prices increase, and there’s scant evidence of improvements in the quality of care that patients receive. There is also a fair amount of evidence that quality of care decreases.”

Meanwhile, an American Hospital Association analysis found consolidations lead to a 3.3% reduction in annual operating expenses and a 3.7% reduction in revenue per patient.

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When Judi Cox was 18, she began searching for her biological mother. Two weeks later she discovered her mother had already died. 

Cox, 41, was born in Gulfport. Her mother was 15 and her father didn’t know he had a child. He would discover his daughter’s existence only when, as an adult, she took an ancestry test and matched with his niece. 

It was this opaque family history, its details coming to light through a convergence of tragedy and happenstance, that led Cox to seek stronger legal protections for adopted people in Mississippi. Ensuring adopted people have access to their birth certificates has been a central pillar of her advocacy on behalf of adoptees. But legislative proposals to advance such protections have died for years, including this year.  

Cox said the failure is an example of discrimination against adopted people in Mississippi — where adoption has been championed as a reprieve for mothers forced into giving birth as a result of the state’s abortion ban. 

“A lot of people think it’s about search and reunion, and it’s not. It’s about having equal rights. I mean, everybody else has their birth certificate,” Cox said. “Why should we be denied ours?”

Mississippi lawmakers who have pushed unsuccessfully for legislation to guarantee adoptees access to their birth certificate have said, in private emails to Cox and interviews with Mississippi Today, that opposition comes from judges.

 “There are a few judges that oppose the bill from what I’ve heard,” wrote Republican Sen. Angela Hill in a 2023 email. 

Hill was recounting opposition to a bill that died during the 2023 legislative session, but a similar measure in 2025 met the same fate. In an interview this month, Hill said she believed the political opposition to the legislation could be bound up with personal interest.

“Somebody in a high place doesn’t want an adoption unsealed,” Hill said. “I don’t know who we’re protecting from somebody finding their birth parents,” Hill said. “But it leads you to believe some people have a very strong interest in keeping adoption records sealed. Unless it’s personal, I don’t understand it.”

In another 2023 email to Cox reviewed by Mississippi Today, Republican Rep. Lee Yancey wrote that some were concerned the bill “might be a deterrent to adoption if their identities were disclosed.”

The 2023 legislative session was the first time a proposal to guarantee adoptees access to their birth certificates was introduced under the state’s new legal landscape surrounding abortion.

In 2018, Mississippi enacted a law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks. The state’s only abortion clinic challenged the law, and that became the case that the U.S. Supreme Court used in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, its landmark 1973 ruling that established a nationwide right to abortion.

Roe v. Wade had rested in part on a woman’s right to privacy, a legal framework Mississippi’s Solicitor General successfully undermined in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Before that ruling, anti-abortion advocates had feared allowing adoptees to obtain their birth certificates could push women toward abortion rather than adoption.

Abortion would look like a better option for parents who feared future contact or disclosure of their identities, the argument went. With legal access to abortion a thing of the past in Mississippi, Cox said she sees a contradiction.

“Mississippi does not recognize privacy in that matter, as far as abortions and all that. So if you don’t acknowledge it in an abortion setting, how can you do it in an adoption setting?” Cox said. “You can’t pick and choose whether you’re going to protect my privacy.”

Opponents to legislation easing access to birth certificates for adoptees have also argued that such proposals would unfairly override previous affidavits filed by birth parents requesting privacy.

The 2025 bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Billy Calvert, would direct the state Bureau of Vital Records to issue adoptees aged 21 and older a copy of their original birth certificate.

The bill would also have required the Bureau to prepare a form parents could use to indicate their preferences regarding contact from an adoptee. That provision, along with existing laws that guard against stalking, would give adoptees access to their birth certificate while protecting parents who don’t wish to be contacted, Cox said.

In 2021, Cox tried to get a copy of her birth certificate. She asked Lauderdale County Chancery Judge Charlie Smith, who is now retired, to unseal her adoption records. The Judge refused because Cox had already learned the identity of her biological parents, emails show.

“With the information that you already have, Judge Smith sees no reason to grant the request to open the sealed adoption records at this time,” wrote Tawanna Wright, administrator for the 12th District Chancery Court in Meridian. “If you would like to formally file a motion and request a hearing, you are certainly welcome to do so.”

In her case and others, judges often rely on a subjective definition of what constitutes a “good cause” for unsealing records, Cox said. Going through the current legal process for unsealing records can be costly, and adoptees can’t always control when and how they learn the identity of their biological parents, Cox added.

After Cox’s biological mother died, her biological uncle was going through her things and came across the phone number for Cox’s adoptive parents. He called them.

“My adoptive mom then called to tell me the news — just hours after learning I was expecting my first child,” Cox said.

The post Adopted people face barriers obtaining birth certificates. Some lawmakers point to murky opposition from judges appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Senate Finance Committee voted Thursday to advance legislation to reduce the state income tax and the sales tax on groceries while raising the gasoline tax.

Republican senators voted to advance the measure, which they say will boost economic activity in Mississippi. Democrats on the committee argued cutting the income tax while raising the gas tax would benefit corporations and harm the working poor.

The Senate plan amounts to a net tax cut of $326 million, a more modest sum than the $1.1 billion net cut passed by the House. The Senate would reduce the state’s flat 4% income tax to 2.99% over four years, a provision that’s likely to become a point of contention with the House, which has pushed for eventual full elimination of the income tax.

If Mississippi were to adopt the House plan, it would join nine other states that don’t have a state income tax. The Senate proposal to maintain the income tax but lower it to 2.99% would make Mississippi’s income tax the nation’s third-lowest, according to Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, a Republican.

Harkins, the Senate plan’s lead author, said the legislation would help Mississippi draw corporate investment and attract new residents migrating from higher-tax states.

READ MORE: House passes $1.1 billion income tax elimination-gas and sales tax increase plan in bipartisan vote

“While it may not be only tax policy, it’s tax policy coupled with regulation and things that induce people to move into the state,” he said. “But it’s part of the equation, and I think that’s the effort that we’re all trying to get here.”

The Senate proposal would also reduce the state’s 7% sales tax on grocery items, the highest in the nation, to 5% starting July 2026.

The Senate would raise the state’s 18.4-cents-a-gallon gasoline excise by three cents each year over the next three years, eventually resulting in a 27.4 cents per gallon gas tax at completion. This is an effort to help the Mississippi Department of Transportation with a long-running shortfall of highway maintenance money.

Democratic Sen. Hob Bryan said the Republican majority’s “obsession” with abolishing or lowering the income tax was being driven by out-of-state corporations and anti-tax activists such as Grover Norquist, who famously said his goal was to shrink government to the size “where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

READ MORE: Speaker White frustrated by ‘crickets’ from Senate on tax plan

“The people who are driving this, the ones who actually know what they’re doing, I’m not talking about the useful idiots,” Bryan said. “They care nothing about roads. They care nothing about water. They care nothing about sewer. They care nothing about public safety. They care nothing about public schools. What they care about is simply reducing government to the size that it could be drowned in a bathtub, as an end in and of itself.”

The debate over tax policy is unfolding as Mississippi has made a push to lure technology companies to the state with generous tax incentives. Republican Sen. Daniel Sparks said the Senate plan would strengthen the state’s effort to create jobs and attract new residents.

“No, I don’t think if you go to zero income tax people are lined up at the state line ready to spring into Mississippi. I’ll concede that point to you,” Sparks said. “But good tax policy brings business, which brings jobs, which brings opportunity.”

Bryan said most people don’t choose where to live based on tax policy. He said the Senate and House tax overhauls would lead to the defunding of public services and shower benefits on corporations instead of workers.

“The tax structure in Mississippi is geared toward making life worse and worse for (the working poor) and shifting more and more of the tax burden to them,” Bryan said.

The Senate announced its plan after the House passed a plan last month that eliminates the income tax over a decade, cuts the state grocery tax and raises sales taxes and gasoline taxes.

In a bid to increase economic development, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has made the full elimination of the state income tax his central legislative priority this session.

It remains unclear if Reeves would sign a tax cut package into law that does not fully eliminate the income tax.

The Senate bill now goes to the floor for a vote before the full chamber.

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Note: This editorial is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a new platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here. 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

In the United States of America, we are free to criticize government, from city hall to the White House.

This somewhat peculiar freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the bedrock of our republic, and many have argued it’s the wellhead from which all our other freedoms flow. The British Crown’s use of “sedition” laws to put down dissent is a key reason we rose up and threw that yoke, and have a First Amendment, and a country.

Someone needs to remind Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Martin of this fundamental of American democracy. And of a few points of law.

Martin has issued a ruling that appears so unconstitutional, so anathema to accepted jurisprudence and so un-American that she’s drawing attention and criticism nationwide and abroad.

Without even granting the newspaper a hearing, Martin issued a temporary restraining order against the Clarksdale Press Register after city officials sued. She ordered the newspaper to take down a Feb. 8 editorial “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust” from its online site and make it inaccessible to readers.

Without. A. Hearing.

The editorial criticized city of Clarksdale officials for not providing the paper notice of a meeting, and it questioned city leaders’ motives in asking the state Legislature to allow creation of a local tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco.

Will they add tea?

City leaders did not like the editorial and sued, claiming it was libelous and hindered their efforts to lobby lawmakers for the tax.

Prior restraint of speech before adjudication that it is not protected has long been held unconstitutional, dating back early in U.S. law.

And besides the inherent wrongness of a Soviet-style censorship order without granting due process to the newspaper, it has also been long and widely held in U.S. law that a government cannot sue for defamation or libel.

As was noted in the case of the City of Chicago v. Tribune Co. in the early 1920s, “no court of last resort in this country has ever held, or even suggested, that prosecutions for libel on government have any place in the American system of jurisprudence.”

But even more astounding, even if the city of Clarksdale did have the right to sue for libel, the city clerk admitted in court filings that she failed to notify the newspaper as required of the meeting.

As longtime Mississippi editor, columnist and attorney Charlie Mitchell said, there are so many things wrong with this ruling, it’s hard to know where to start.

Our nation’s founders despised and feared tyrannical government that brooks no redress from those governed or from a free press. And the people and the free press have the right to criticize government be it at Clarksdale City Hall or in Washington, D.C.

The post Editorial: Someone needs to read the First Amendment to Judge Crystal Wise Martin appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A Mississippi judge ordered a newspaper to remove an editorial criticizing the mayor of Clarksdale and city leaders after the officials sued the news outlet, leading press advocates to criticize the order as one of the most egregious First Amendment violations in recent years. 

Without a hearing for the newspaper, Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Martin issued a temporary restraining order against the Clarksdale Press Register on Tuesday after the news outlet wrote a Feb. 8 editorial titled “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust.” 

The column criticized the city for not sending the newspaper a notice about a meeting city commissioners held over a proposed effort to ask the state Legislature for permission to enact a local tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco. 

As of Thursday morning, the news outlet had removed the editorial from its website, but Wyatt Emmerich, the newspaper’s owner, told Mississippi Today that he intended to fight the judge’s order in court, which he called “absolutely astounding.” 

“There wasn’t a hearing over this or anything,” Emmerich said. “We haven’t even been served with process.”

Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy, a Democrat, and the Board of Commissioners filed the petition in Hinds County, calling the editorial “libelous’ and saying the editorial would bring “immediate and irreparable injury” to the city.

“(The editorial’s) statements could be reasonably understood as declaring or implying that the ‘deceptive’ reason he was not given notice of the meeting is provable through someone in the community willing to reveal promises made by the Board members in exchange for votes or in the process of time,” the city’s petition reads. 

The litigation stems from a special-called meeting the board conducted. State law requires public bodies to post a notice of a special meeting in a public place and on the city’s website, if they have one, at least one hour before the meeting. 

The state’s Open Meetings Act also requires public bodies to email a notice of the meeting to media outlets and citizens who have asked to be placed on the city’s email distribution list. 

The Clarksdale city clerk, Laketha Covington, filed an affidavit saying she did post the meeting notice at City Hall. However, she admitted she forgot to send out an email notice about the special meeting but that it was a simple mistake and not intentional.

Charlie Mitchell is the former executive editor of the Vicksburg Post and is an attorney. He is an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media, where he has taught media law for years. He told Mississippi Today there were so many issues with the judge’s order that he didn’t even “know where to start.” 

The municipality is suing the media outlet over defamation, which is typically used when individuals or businesses believe their reputation has been harmed. But government bodies, according to Mitchell, are “defamation-proof and always have been.” 

“The First Amendment allows restraint of expression, including by the media, only extremely rarely and only when there is clear evidence of immediate and irreparable risk to the public — such as blocking publication that would identify confidential informants,” Mitchell said. 

For decades, state and federal courts have held that news outlets criticizing government actions through editorials are protected speech. But there have been attempts to silence local news outlets in recent years. 

In 2023, a Kansas police department raided a newspaper’s office and its owner’s home after alleging the outlet potentially committed identity theft over its report on a local business owner’s driving record. 

Layne Bruce, the executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, wrote in a statement that the organization’s leadership stands with the newspaper and is strongly opposed to the judge’s order. 

“The Press Association feels this is an egregious overreach and that it clearly runs counter to First Amendment rights,” Bruce said 

The judge scheduled a full hearing on the litigation for 9:30 a.m. on February 27.

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Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann presided over the Senate on Thursday, a day after he collapsed in the chamber.

In brief remarks from the dias Thursday and a statement posted to social media, Hosemann said he had been dehydrated.

“I do want to apologize for interrupting the session yesterday,” Hosemann said, and joked, “I am going to ask the Rules Committee to make February 19, Hydration Awareness Day.”

A few minutes before 11 a.m. on Wednesday, as the Senate was about to take up its final appropriation bills for the day, Hosemann slumped over his lectern and microphone, then fell to one side.

Medical staff tended to him as regained consciousness and was sitting upright shortly after he fell. Later, Hosemann was seen walking out of the Capitol flanked by staff and security and he got in a government vehicle.

The Legislature quickly removed a video recording of Senate proceedings that showed the incident. The video remained unavailable on the Legislature’s YouTube page as of Thursday morning.

In a statement posted to social media on Wednesday evening, Hosemann said he hadn’t drunk enough water that day.

“Thank you all for the kind words and prayers,” Hosemann wrote. “I was dehydrated and am feeling fine now. I am grateful for Mississippi’s phenomenal medical professionals and am ready to go back to work tomorrow. Lesson learned: Stay hydrated.

Senators rose to give Hosemann a standing ovation before the body continued its normal proceedings.

“On behalf of the members of the Mississippi Senate and millions of Mississippians, welcome back and we’re glad you’re well,” said Republican Sen. Kevin Blackwell.

The post Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann back at Capitol day after collapsing appeared first on Mississippi Today.

“Anybody home?” Dee Dee Barlow Moore shouts from the window of her Jeep as she pulls up to a homeless encampment in North Jackson known as The Hill. Her truck is loaded up with clothes, water, gallon ziploc bags filled with snacks and 30 pound bags of dog food. Moore is a volunteer who spends her days supporting the homeless community and rescuing animals from the streets.

“This is what feeds my soul,” Moore said. “Serving these people gives me purpose and it actually makes me feel like I’m contributing and I’m trying to improve someone’s life. It may not be a big improvement. It may be enough for them to know that someone cares.”

Around Jackson, people experiencing homelessness have said their paths to being homeless have all been different. Josh said he lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic. He decided to go into business restoring sport bikes, and after he put all of his money into one project, someone stole it from outside of the Motel 6 where he’d been staying. He lost his income, and within the month, he found himself on the streets for the last two years.

“I couldn’t pay for my room anymore, and it just snowballed from there,” Josh said.

Phillip, who is disabled, said he’s been homeless for the last five years.

“I had no place else to go but a shelter or a halfway house, and they’re just too messed up to go to,” said Phillip. “I try to stay away from drugs and that’s where they’re at. So I just stay in the woods.”

Preston Martin has been living in an encampment for over a year. He was released from prison and is now caught in a legal fight over his parole. 

“They wouldn’t let me go home, so this was the next step,” he said. “I don’t have anybody in Jackson, and I really don’t have any family to this day.” 

Another man experiencing homelessness closer to Downtown Jackson, Giom, a Marine veteran, said that in his two years on the streets, his encampment has become a safe space for homeless people. 

“This is the village is what we call it, and this is a family,” said Giom. “We take care of each other. People have been mistreated in other spots. This is a sanctuary for them. This is where they’re going to be safe. This is holy ground.” 

Anti-camping bills are being introduced in the Mississippi Legislature this year, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which allows cities to ban public sleeping, targeting homeless populations. 

Compared to other states, Mississippi has one of the lowest numbers of people experiencing homelessness, according to data from the 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Jackson has been praised for avoiding the homelessness crises other cities have experienced.

But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from introducing legislation that could ban public camping or prohibit panhandling. 

“It’s a national topic, so I think they’re kind of jumping on the bandwagon, because honestly, our homeless numbers aren’t near as high as a lot of other states,” Moore said.

House Bill 1203 passed from the Mississippi House on Feb 5. Authored by Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent representing Jackson, the bill would prohibit camping on property that is not a designated space by a municipality or the county.

If passed into law, anyone who violates the bill and is convicted can be charged a fine of $50 after a hearing before a judge. The bill also states that alternative penalties may be imposed, but those penalties may not include jail time.

“The goal is to obviously encourage those who are sleeping on the street to go to shelters or other resource centers as opposed to sleeping on the street,” Yates told Mississippi Today.  “None of us feel that those who are sleeping on the street are getting resources or help that they need. There’s nothing on the street to help anybody there.”

The bill was met with pushback from House Democrats, with many questioning whether the bill would infringe on the rights of people experiencing homelessness.

“If I’m homeless, do you think I have $50 to pay for a fine?” asked Rep. John Hines, a Democrat representing Greenville, during the Feb. 5 floor debate.

“I don’t know what people do or do not have. I’m not here to speculate on that,” Yates replied.

Rep. Gene Newman, a Republican representing Rankin County, who introduced a similar unsuccessful bill, told Mississippi Today, “I’m not trying to be punitive to people. This is just trying to make sure they’re not infringing on other people’s rights by camping on the streets.”

The Senate advanced a separate bill, Senate Bill 2334, that would not only prohibit public camping, but also target panhandling by prohibiting solicitation without a permit, and provide for the removal of encampments after 48 hours. 

And in Jackson last year, the city council introduced an ordinance banning public sleeping outside. Ward 7 Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay said she received calls from her constituents, concerned about the unhoused taking over public parks.

“I was really hoping to bring the matter into focus so that we would have more energy and effort put into finding alternative housing solutions. What I came to realize was that it’s just such a complex and complicated issue,” Lindsay said.

The Jackson City Council postponed the vote indefinitely in December, which Lindsay said was to give council members more time to study the homelessness issue.

“I pulled the ordinance back because I think there just has to be more conversations, not only with the agencies that are providing services to the unhoused at this time, but also other nonprofit and church organizations to see if we can come up with a better plan to address the unhoused needs,” she said.

Homelessness advocates worry about what these bills, and potential fines, could mean for the homeless communities who are having to do without, especially as community conversations point to bans.

In the early morning hours in late January, Dawn Magee pulled a yellow vest over her winter coat in preparation to head into the woods in search of homeless encampments around south and west Jackson. She’s a volunteer for the Central Mississippi Continuum of Care, and she’s participating in a federal census known as the Point in Time Count, or PIT Count, when organizations across the country take a count of their homeless populations.

Magee, assistant administrator at Utopia Assisted Living, said she volunteers because it puts into perspective how much effort people experiencing homelessness put into building a community.

“You have the stereotype of homelessness that everyone is familiar with,” Magee said. “But when you go into the encampments, you see that there is actually a community. They look after each other. They take care of each other.”

The PIT survey starts like this: “Where did you sleep on January 22nd?”

Since 2005, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has required states to conduct a yearly census of their homeless populations in order to receive funding for homelessness services, such as permanent rehousing, rapid rehousing and shelters. Nationally, experts agree it’s a flawed count, often resulting in a much smaller number than the actual population.

The count attempts to quantify the number of homeless people who are sheltered, meaning the person is residing in temporary housing or a shelter, and unsheltered, those who are sleeping in places not meant for habitation, such as sidewalks, encampments and or abandoned buildings.

“It gives us a snapshot of our homeless population to show a snippet of how homelessness looks on one specific night within our five counties,” said Melvin Stamps, Planning Director for the local Continuum of Care organization covering five central Mississippi counties including Hinds County, where Jackson is located.

Local organizations are supplemented by funds from the Central Mississippi Continuum of Care. On average, the COC grants out about $1.3 million in federal dollars. For the 2025 funding year, that number increased to nearly $1.6 million. Stamps said every dollar gets into the hands of organizations.

“I can definitively say that all the service providers that are all funded through the COC, all of the money is expended and used within that granting period,” Stamps said. “We don’t have any money that has been recaptured that would cause them to not give us more funding.”

Data from the Central Mississippi Continuum of Care show the number of people experiencing homelessness in the region has pretty steadily declined since 2007, the start of available data. The count was the largest at 1,300 in 2008, then ranged from about 400 to 800 between 2015 and 2020. By 2024, the rate of people experiencing homelessness dropped to 273. About two-thirds were male, and more than half were Black. 

Stamps credits community awareness events and job fairs for the declining numbers, saying people who were at risk of becoming homeless were directed to resources, such as rapid rehousing or transitional housing.

“Any individual who had been identified to be homeless or at the verge of becoming homeless had providers and us who could be able to assist them and refer them over to a housing provider to ensure that their homeless experience, or potential homeless experience, will be brief and rare,” said Stamps. 

But local homelessness organizations say according t0 the requests they receive, the city is facing an influx of need. “Based on the phone calls we get daily, and we’re just one organization, the numbers are not accurate. They’re inaccurately low,” said Jackson Resource Center CEO Putalamus White.

Moore worries that the proposed legislation will lead to unnecessary jail time for the remaining homeless people who are trying to survive.

“They don’t have a dime to their name, don’t have clothing, don’t have hygiene products. Where are you going to put them?” Moore said. “If you take them to jail, how long are you going to hold them? Because you can’t hold them for something like that for long, and they’re going to be right back where they were.”

Lisa, who lives in an encampment in West Jackson with her husband Eric, worries about run-ins with police. She said that sometimes, homeless people are lumped into one with those who are committing crimes. 

“We got people out here doing stuff that’s not right, and all homeless people get blamed for it,” said Lisa. “We get profiled from having a backpack on. They say we’re a thief. I get accused of being a thief and I’m not. I don’t bother people. I try to stay out of the way, because my life has been threatened.” 

The Jackson Police Department said that the department will continue to respond to crime related calls that involve homeless people, though they aren’t looking to criminalize homelessness.

“Being homeless is not a crime, so we don’t go around the city telling people to move,” said Tommie Brown, Public Information Officer for the Jackson Police Department. “We don’t go around tearing down encampments. We only respond to crime related calls.”

Brown said JPD has a community engagement unit which supplies homeless people with resource guides for where to find shelter. If either bill makes it into law, JPD will enforce it, but Brown said there are a lot of issues to be addressed before the bill could work the way it’s intended.

“In order for the city or any city to be effective in enforcing laws that move homeless people along, or move them outside of what they have established as their place where they’re living or staying, the city needs to have options or alternatives to places where they can stay,” said Brown.

Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley said the issues of homelessness can be a drain on City resources such as the police and fire departments. 

“Right now we have fires all over the city,” said Hartley. “Some of them are related to homeless individuals trying to stay warm. It taxes our resources, and we don’t have a strategy, a plan to deal with it. So, I am encouraged by the state stepping up and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to create laws.’”

Hartley said in a December City Council meeting that his ward has the bulk of the homeless population, around 80 percent he estimated. He’s concerned about the City’s ability to mitigate the issue without a designated homeless coordinator – a position it filled in the past – or the infrastructure needed to tackle the challenges that people experiencing homelessness deal with. 

Mukesh Kumar, a former Director of Planning and Development for the City said it helps to have a homeless coordinator because the city could concentrate mitigation efforts through one office. 

“It doesn’t have to be one person, but what it does is allow you to coordinate in a more organized way, but you still have to deal with several different entities,” said Kumar. “It’s not purely a housing problem, and having a coordinator allows you to coordinate all the services that you’re trying to provide.”

A homeless coordinator acts as a liaison between the homeless person and city and government resources. Because Jackson doesn’t have a homelessness coordinator, there isn’t a dedicated person in the city who can direct homeless people to those entities, such as nonprofit organizations and church groups, housing assistance or veteran services. 

“One can’t treat the unhoused population as they have the same problem, so you have to determine what approach you want to take to help the most people,” said Kumar. “It’s almost never a one size fits all challenge, and no two cities are going to be alike.” 

The city did recently approve a project with Jackson Resource Center to build a 60-unit tiny house village for very low-income Jacksonians, designed to address homelessness, in west Jackson, but months after the approval, White told Mississippi Today the city has yet to deliver a signed contract for the organization to break ground.

The City has not responded to repeated requests for an interview to discuss its strategy to address homelessness.

Mississippi Today requested the city’s 10-year strategic plan to end chronic homelessness, data gathered through the city’s participation in Functional Zero, and any other documents related to the city’s homeless programs.

The Built for Zero initiative seeks to ensure homelessness is rare and brief in communities across America, with Functional Zero set as a major milestone. Functional Zero means the number of people experiencing homelessness is not greater than the available housing during any given month. It requires cities to collect comprehensive data on their homeless communities and create equitable solutions.

The City only provided one document, the strategic plan drafted in 2006.

“The city needs to take leadership and at least develop a comprehensive plan to deal with homelessness, which includes some non-profits, but we need to take the lead,” Hartley said. “We need to first admit we have a problem. The second thing we need to do, in addition to admitting that we have a problem, is to say, ‘Here’s the plan of how we’re going to deal with it.’”

The post In a city without a plan, anti-public sleeping bills pop up at Jackson City Hall and state Capitol appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For nearly nine years, Mississippi Today’s team of dedicated journalists has provided impactful, nationally-renowned accountability journalism at the statewide level on behalf of every Mississippian.

We’re proud to announce this week that we’re adding a new aim to our newsroom’s mission: We’re launching a team of journalists focused solely on the city of Jackson.

For the past several months, we’ve been meeting with and listening to stakeholders across Jackson to determine how, exactly, we can best serve. It has become clear to us during this process that our capital city needs responsible and focused journalism now more than ever, and our journey officially begins today.

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s full coverage of Jackson

Depending on who you know, your personal experiences, the classes or churches you attend, the media you consume, or the route you take to work, Jacksonians carry very different perceptions of this wonderfully weird city. In this way, there become multiple — all very real — Jacksons. Ideally, the storytelling by Mississippi Today’s new desk will help readers understand one Jackson, in all its complexities.

When we’re doing it well, our reporting presents solutions and results in tangible impact — every proper journalist’s goal. Just as worthy is our mission to produce stories that delight, astound, inspire, haunt, instruct, excite, gobsmack, galvanize and advance more social connectedness in our city.

Rarely in our city’s 203-year existence has there been a more critical time to launch such an endeavor.

In the coming weeks and months, Jacksonians will be hiring a mayor, the executive in charge of managing the city and its $335 million budget, as well as seven city council members tasked with representing the interests of their wards. We hope the comprehensive 2025 Jackson Election Guide we published today, with words directly from all of the 54 candidates vying for public office, encourages better-informed civic engagement across the city during this historic election.

We’ll also be watching how Jackson’s interests play out during the legislative session — where funding requests for needs across the city are often overlooked by state leaders. And with so much tumult in Washington, we will closely cover the effects of the new administration on the critical federal resources Jackson is able to access.

Jacksonians deserve strong storytelling and deeper accountability reporting, and we are ready to provide just that.

This will include person-centered stories about housing, like Jackson Reporter Maya Miller’s report published today about the challenges facing homeless Jacksonians and efforts from state leaders to penalize them. (It’s the very definition of shoe leather reporting… she came back to the office recently with debris on her combat boots and the knees of her blue jeans.)

READ MORE: Maya Miller joins new Mississippi Today team covering Jackson

And tomorrow, a piece from me about predatory unlicensed care homes that have long plagued the city — a situation that has rattled me since my earliest days of reporting in 2014 when I first arrived in Jackson.

Our team’s coverage of safety will include stories on policing, of course, but as my reporter colleague Molly Minta sharply observed to me recently, examining the safety of Jacksonians can take many forms: taking stock of the public parks where our children play; code enforcement in the apartment buildings and houses where we live; accessibility to things like energy and rental assistance for those homes; and the care and regard that Jackson schools offer to our young people, many of whom are affected by trauma.

Other areas of focus for our team will include public education and schools, economic opportunities and civic engagement, and the effects of distrust in institutions.

Expect to see pieces that highlight Jacksonians, some in government, business, or one of thousands of registered nonprofits across the city, and some working independently, often creatively with few resources, to affect positive change in their communities.

And we will, of course, bring you stories about what your leaders are up to at City Hall (and elsewhere), always asking how their actions affect you.

We’ll be asking ourselves a lot of questions, too, about our role in helping Jacksonians stay informed and about the value and ramifications of the stories we choose to tackle.

Firstly, we want to continue to hear from you. Tell us what questions you need answered, which stories have been overlooked or deserve deeper coverage, and what information you need to feel empowered and more connected.

Can’t wait to hear from you.

The post Mississippi Today announces new team of reporters to cover the city of Jackson appeared first on Mississippi Today.