OurTupelo

House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar has helped steer more than $7 million in state money to improve the affluent country club neighborhood and private golf course area where he lives in north Mississippi. 

In the process, he also purchased more property for himself around the projects. 

The state-funded projects included $2.5 million in upgrades to the county road through his neighborhood and another $2.4 million project on and around the golf course. The stated reasoning for the golf course project is that the road project made it flood — a contention that the county engineer and road project contractor disputed in interviews with Mississippi Today.

The work included building a traffic roundabout on Country Club Road — an unusual feature for a rural-suburban street — and 10 speed humps in a 1.6-mile stretch. It also included widening the road so golf carts can more easily travel, according to the county engineer. The work also included building a new lake and concrete golf cart paths and bridges on the private golf course. 

Lamar also helped steer another $200,000 in state money for the nearby city of Senatobia to buy the small water system that serves the Back Acres Country Club neighborhood in Tate County. He then helped steer another $2 million from the state to improve the system, which serves about 200 houses.

Lamar purchased a 4.5-acre piece of property where the roundabout was to be built, and he bought a strip of land bordering his backyard from the water system owner after the city bought the system.

Lamar, as House Ways and Means Committee chairman and former vice chairman, holds great sway over the state’s $7 billion budget. He’s also become the House’s de facto arbiter of “Christmas tree” bills. These are measures full of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of legislators’ pet projects for their districts. As a result, Tate County, Senatobia and his neighborhood have benefited greatly, receiving tens of millions of state dollars — dwarfing spending in similar rural areas across the state.

Lamar in an interview with Mississippi Today defended the spending on his neighborhood. He said the road project was badly needed for safety for a “very dangerous road.” He said the road project then caused flooding on the golf course and surrounding yards and the county was responsible for fixing it.

Lamar said the small water system serving the neighborhood was in terrible shape and the source of many complaints. He noted the state Public Service Commission signed off on Senatobia taking over service.

He said his purchase of property around the state-funded projects was incidental and “like any other sale or purchase … between two private entities.” He insinuated his wife handled the transaction for the roundabout property, although state records indicate he did. 

Lamar cut a second interview with Mississippi Today short, saying he would not answer further questions. But he sent a written statement saying that, “After helping with thousands of projects across the state, this result is inevitable” — that he or his family would own property “in the vicinity of a public infrastructure project.”

He refused to answer any questions about his helping secure an additional $400,000 in state money to improve a quiet, already well-paved cul-de-sac in Northeast Jackson where he also owns a home.

“Any potential innuendo of wrongdoing is baseless and only diverts time and effort away from the real progress that we are making,” Lamar said in the written statement.

But there has been debate and questions from local residents about whether the Country Club Road project completed early last year was really needed or whether the project was overkill. They’ve also questioned the work on and around the private golf course and whether the road project really exacerbated country club flooding. 

Locals created a Facebook page called “TateCounty Watchdogs,” with its posts and comments centered on the state-funded county work at the country club.

The watchdog group has questioned why, if the road project caused flooding on the golf course and surrounds, taxpayers funded the more than $2 million fix instead of the county going after surety with the contractor or engineer to cover it.

Numerous current and past Tate County supervisors declined to answer such questions or did not respond to calls requesting interviews. Others said they know very little about the country club projects.

There was a common theme among many of the dozens of residents and county and state officials including lawmakers Mississippi Today interviewed or attempted to interview: They cited fear of the powerful lawmaker Lamar in declining to comment on the record. 

For fellow lawmakers, Lamar holds the purse strings in the House for projects in their districts. For locals, Lamar’s family is a prominent one. His family law firm serves as legal counsel for Tate County, including the county board of supervisors that approved the projects in question. Lamar’s father served as county attorney before the county contracted the work with the firm. Lamar’s mother is a former state Supreme Court justice and Institutions of Higher Learning college board member.

‘Mother Nature caused the flooding’

Tate County Engineer Kevin McLeod, whose firm designed the Country Club Road and golf course projects, said the road “was mainly a safety and maintenance project.”

“Safety in that speed bumps were added, it was repaved and we added a 4- or 5-foot paved shoulder on one side so golf carts could travel safely,” McLeod said. “At public meetings, people were saying golf carts were using the road but it wasn’t wide enough for them to travel safely.”

McLeod said that despite “some residents who think that’s the case,” the road project did not cause flooding.

“The road project did not cause flooding,” McLeod said. “Mother nature caused the flooding.” He said that as the project was nearing completion, the area had two massive rains, “where even the best areas would flood.” He said residents mistook the historic deluges as the project causing more flooding. 

“Soon after that we got phone calls — not many, but a few — from people who said it never did this until the road project started,” McLeod said. He said a retention pond on the front nine holes of the golf course had a bad standpipe. He said two main ditches through the country club, one through the front nine holes and one through the back nine, “had not been maintained in years.”

Bram Billingsley, owner of Ste-Bil Grading that did the Country Club Road project, said he built the road as designed and, “I find it hard to believe that what we did caused all this drainage work on the golf course.”

“All I know is we did the work as designed, or the county wouldn’t have paid us,” Billingsley said. “Now we’re being blamed … If they think it’s the fault of the contractor, then yes, the county should have done something. We’re bonded 100% on performance and payment. If we were outside our lines, then file a claim on our bond. That would be 1-2-3, just like a blank check. But they didn’t do that.”

According to minutes of the Tate County Board of Supervisors, the county received two letters claiming the road project was causing flooding, one from a homeowner and one from the Back Acres Country Club. The letters had identical wording and called for the county to fix the flooding.

But the county did not file a claim against the contractor for the road work. Instead, Lamar and the Legislature stepped in again, with an additional $2.4 million in state dollars for work to fix drainage on and around the golf course.

County Engineer McLeod said he wrote up an estimate for the drainage work, “the county sent it in, it got put on a list and they were lucky enough to get some funding for it.”

Lamar and McLeod said the county received easements for all the work it did at the country club and in neighbors’ yards. McLeod said all of the curbed concrete golf cart paths the county built “were put in to raise them up so they could act as a levy to slow the water down behind them,” not for ease of golfers getting around.

A representative of the contractor that did the golf course work did not return calls for an interview.

Tate County District Attorney Jay Hale, a former Back Acres Country Club board member who still helps the club board with legal issues, said his sister was the homeowner who wrote the complaint letter because her property had severe flooding from the road project.

“We put the county on notice that they had caused a problem,” Hale said. “… My sister and brother-in-law were getting ready to sue the county. There were numerous complaints from residents. They flooded the country club with that project. It’s moving the same amount of water, but much faster. My sister had videos of water flying down her property. At one point her pool was about to go underwater.”

Hale said Country Club Road was in bad shape and he believes the initial project was needed, though he added, “I guess that’s probably up for debate.” But he said the county was responsible for fixing the drainage afterward.

“None of the country club members wanted (the drainage project),” Hale said. “They understood it was needed for drainage, but it shut down the golf course, at least nine holes at a time, for a year.”

Jason Carter, current Back Acres Country Club board president, said, “This wasn’t a beautification project.”

Hale and Carter said the concrete golf cart paths the county built with state funds — about $200,000 worth — were to replace paths the county destroyed with its drainage work. They said the club liked the way the new paths looked, so it shelled out about $30,000 of its own money to rebuild others on the course to match. They said residents questioning the work could have confused the club’s work with the taxpayer-funded work.

Hale said some of the questions and complaints about the work could be simply because it was done for a country club neighborhood.

“There are about 300 members, out of 28,000 people in the county,” Hale said. “I guess people don’t like seeing money put into where it went.”

Watchdogs take note of ‘Trey Way’

Lamar’s scoring lots of tax dollars for his neighborhood and district has in recent years drawn the ire of some fellow lawmakers. But it has also raised questions and attracted scrutiny from his own constituents.

The TateCounty Watchdogs Facebook page was formed in June, about the same time Mississippi Today started receiving messages and questions about the work.

Some locals have nicknamed Country Club Road “Trey Way.” They’ve questioned the government doing work in and around Back Acres Country Club and whether work on the golf course was more about golfing than drainage.

“This project is spending just over $2.1 million dollars on the Back Acres Country Club private golf course,” the initial Watchdog post said. “Over $200,000 is being spent on golf cart paths per itemized listing.” 

A later post said: “The next step is to inspect the premise under which all this Tate County money was spent on a private golf course, rather than the abundance of the public property issues we have … Who is the responsible contractor, and why was his bond against surety company not pursued?”

Another post said: “It is common knowledge the back 9 flooded before the road project. If the damage was caused by the county road project, why can’t the county explain which contracted party is responsible?” One local commenter on the page said, “Country Club road was the best road in the county before they did the work.”

But the administrator of the TateCounty Watchdogs page, contacted through private message, declined to identify themselves or speak about the issues on the record. Numerous other residents contacted shared that trepidation.

Residents early last year did publicly voice complaints and sign a petition to the county about the large number of large speed humps on the improved Country Club Road – 10 in less than two miles. They said the speed humps, roundabout and two three-way stops were ridiculous and could impede first responders trying to traverse the road. Lamar addressed residents at a hearing about the speed humps and said they were needed for traffic safety. But after the complaints, the county came back and milled off half of the speed humps.

Residents have had trouble getting answers from county leaders. Several present and past county leaders contacted by Mississippi Today brushed off questions, claimed they knew little about the projects or didn’t return calls and messages. About a month after Mississippi Today submitted written questions, the county supplied some written statements but did not answer some main questions.

Tate County Supervisor Leigh Ann Darby represents the area. She notes she took office in January and “this project predates me.”

Darby said she knows little about the projects, but is aware of the questions being asked about them, including why the county didn’t go after contractor surety if the road caused flooding.

“I would say, yes, a lot of money was funneled into that project for a public road, then was rolled over into the golf course,” Darby said. “I know that question has been posed numerous times. I have not heard a definitive answer to that.”

Darby said she joined the Back Acres Country Club long ago but has not been an active member for years.

“I was not involved in any aspect of obtaining that money,” Darby said. “I don’t play golf. My family doesn’t, and I don’t even travel that road often … But I am for complete transparency, and I am raising questions, too … I saw the public records request you sent up here … I am for complete transparency and I don’t want Tate County hiding anything.”

Current Tate County Board President Tony Sandridge was a supervisor when the projects were approved, but he said he also knows very little about them.

“If it’s not in District 3, I’m really not sure about it,” he said. 

Supervisor George Stepp said he is new to the board and knows little about it other than, “It was all state funded, no money from the county – I can tell you this … I try to stay away from some of this. I don’t get too involved.”

About a month after receiving written questions from Mississippi Today, the Tate County Board of Supervisors responded in writing with a letter signed by Sandridge, but the responses left much unanswered.

“Current elected officials and staff do not have the knowledge to answer questions surrounding the history of this project other than what is recorded on the county’s official minutes,” the written response said. “… Tate County, to our knowledge, has never made a finding as to the cause of the flooding. Whether the flooding existed prior to the road project, worsened after the road project, or was caused by extreme weather events that are the acts of God, the Tate County Board of Supervisors realized a problem existed …”

The statement said the two letters received about flooding “are the only two formal complaints ‘as a result of the project’ made to the county and spread on the minutes” but one other nearby neighbor in 2022 complained to the board about drainage.

The statement did not answer why, if the project caused or exacerbated flooding, the county did not hold the contractor or engineer accountable. Instead, Sandridge wrote, the county was doing work “necessary to promote the health, comfort and convenience of the inhabitants of Tate County.”

The county’s response noted that when the initial, partial state funding for the project was secured, the county was under the “beat system” where each supervisor manages roads in his or her district, and that former Supervisor Cam Walker who retired in 2019 was in charge of that district.

Walker, whom Mississippi Today had been unable to reach for comment, provided a brief written statement as part of the county’s response. He said the road was dangerous and he had been working to improve it since at least 2006, but was unable to secure funding. He said he attended at least two public hearings when he was in office where citizens demanded the road be “improved and made safer.”

‘That’s a private transaction’ 

Lamar built his home on Country Club Road on the outskirts of Senatobia in 2015. 

In 2018, as the Legislature struggled to find money in austere times for badly needed infrastructure improvements statewide, Lamar helped secure $1 million for overhauling Country Club Road. The money sat in the county’s bank account for a while. In 2020, Lamar helped steer another $1.5 million to the road.

In 2018, Lamar defended funding for the project after it was temporarily axed from the legislative spending bill and a reporter asked about it being the road on which he lives. He said it’s a main thoroughfare that badly needed safety improvements and at least two people had been killed on it. Records show there were two traffic deaths on Country Club Road – one in 2004 and one in 2016.

Lamar said at the time, “I don’t apologize for working to help my people. That is my job.”

In 2022, Lamar helped create the Tate County Erosion Control and Repair Fund with state legislation. To date, the country club golf course area work is the only project that has been completed through the fund.

Lamar said there is nothing untoward about him buying property related to the Country Club Road project or the city takeover of the neighborhood water system after helping fund them with state dollars. 

JT Delta Company LLC bought the 4.5 acres on the north of what was to become the new roundabout on the road after the state funding was approved. Lamar said, “My wife owns that LLC … and it’s a real estate company.” But state records show Trey Lamar as the only officer and registered agent of the LLC, and it appears he handled the paperwork for the purchase.

“That’s a private transaction,” Lamar said. “It had nothing to do with the county, so it’s like any other sale or purchase of real estate between two private entities … That project was already decided on when that purchase was made. I don’t design roundabouts or design intersections. So that’s something that would have been done by the county and the county’s engineer.”

Lamar said that after the city of Senatobia bought the small New Image water system serving the country club neighborhood, it hooked the area up to the city system and didn’t need the small strip of property the small system owned adjacent to Lamar’s backyard. 

“It’s, I don’t know, a tenth of an acre,” Lamar said. “So when the city purchased that system, they abandoned that well, and I think they sold the equipment that was there … That system was owned by one gentleman … and left him owning a tenth of an acre or whatever … I purchased that in a private transaction … that had nothing to do with the water system.

“I’m not on city water,” Lamar said. “I wasn’t on the New Image system … I’m on a private well.”

Lamar said he made the land purchases after the state funding and projects were approved.

State law prohibits public officials from using their official positions to obtain, or attempt to obtain, financial benefit for themselves.

State Ethics Commission Director Tom Hood, speaking generally and not about Lamar or the country club projects and land deals, said a public official helping secure improvements to his neighborhood or street would not necessarily pose a legal issue. He noted a past Ethics Commission ruling that said a city could extend its water system to land owned by a mayor.

“If you’ve got to speculate about something affecting property value, then that’s not enough,” Hood said. “If there’s no pecuniary benefit, then there’s no violation. You have to prove monetary benefit to somebody caused by the government action … Even going from a gravel road to a paved road, if the only benefit is you don’t have to wash your car as much — those are difficult questions.”

Hood said a public official purchasing property around a public project also wouldn’t automatically pose an ethical question.

“That could be a problem if they were using nonpublic information for the purchase,” Hood said. “But if the information was already public, that statute wouldn’t apply … The short answer on these situations is: it depends.”

Meanwhile, TateCounty Watchdogs, which recently had more than 2,200 followers, posted: “In our opinion, even if it was all ‘State money,’ that is no justification to use public monies in this way. Every working Tate Countian pays income tax in to the state of Mississippi. The state then allocates some of that money back out to the counties for roads, infrastructure and whatnot. If our County is placing these dollars into private properties, it will require that much more in County taxes for Tate County to meet her obligations.

“Stay tuned to avoid being taken advantage of as you live your life in and around Tate County,” the post concluded.

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The post Powerful lawmaker helped steer millions in state dollars for his neighborhood, golf course appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In a capital city infamous for its crumbling roads and lack of money to fix them, a powerful lawmaker helped steer $400,000 in state taxpayer funds to repave a small, already well-paved northeast Jackson cul-de-sac where he owns a house.

Simwood Place, located in the affluent LoHo neighborhood of northeast Jackson, is a sleepy residential street home to 14 colorful, single-family homes. It’s tucked away behind The District at Eastover, a multimillion-dollar retail development along Interstate 55 that boasts high-end shops and restaurants.

This isn’t the typical kind of road project the state of Mississippi would usually get involved in. But House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, one of the most influential leaders at the state Capitol, owns one of the 14 homes on the street.

Lamar is a top lieutenant of House Speaker Jason White and the House’s point person for deciding how state money is doled out in the Legislature’s annual local projects bills, commonly called the “Christmas tree bill.”

Public land records show that Lamar’s business, JT Delta Company, purchased a Simwood Place home in August 2023. Just a few months later, in the next legislative session held in early 2024, the $400,000 Simwood Place repaving project was approved by state lawmakers. This appropriation, tucked into a lengthy bill, later surprised some lawmakers and local city leaders.

Democratic Sen. David Blount and independent Rep. Shanda Yates, the two state lawmakers who represent that part of Jackson, told Mississippi Today that they did not ask legislative leaders to appropriate money for the project, which is usually how local projects receive funding. 

“This was not one of my projects,” Yates said. “I don’t know anything about it.” 

Lamar declined to answer any specific questions about the Simwood Place appropriation, abruptly ending a telephone interview with Mississippi Today about state dollars he’s secured for various projects and the property he owns near those projects. Mississippi Today subsequently sent Lamar a list of written questions about the Jackson property, and he also declined to answer those.

However, he told Mississippi Today in a general statement that it was “inevitable” that his family members would own private property near public road projects.

“Any potential innuendo of wrongdoing is baseless and only diverts time and effort away from the real progress that we are making,” Lamar said.

Mississippi law states that public officials cannot use their official office, either directly or indirectly, for “pecuniary benefit” or to somehow enrich themselves. 

State Ethics Commission Director Tom Hood, speaking generally and not about Lamar or the Simwood Place project, said a public official helping secure improvements to a street where they own a home would not necessarily pose a legal issue. 

“If you’ve got to speculate about something affecting property value, then that’s not enough,” Hood said. “If there’s no pecuniary benefit, then there’s no violation. You have to prove monetary benefit to somebody caused by the government action … Even going from a gravel road to a paved road, if the only benefit is you don’t have to wash your car as much — those are difficult questions.”

Legislative leaders keep tight control over what gets added to the final Christmas tree bill, which becomes a powerful political tool for keeping rank-and-file members in line with the leadership’s policy agenda. 

But it’s become increasingly common in recent years for the top lawmaker who controls excess funds like Lamar, to have large power over how much money they can steer toward their personal pet projects. 

Jackson-area lawmakers have asked legislative leaders for years to help fund local road projects, and they claim those requests have continuously fallen on deaf ears, making the Simwood Place project even more notable.

The legislation that allocated the funds for the Simwood Place project routed the money through the Capitol Complex Improvement District’s Project Advisory Committee, a board composed of local and state appointees who recommend to lawmakers which Jackson-area projects they should fund.

The CCID is a carveout of the capital city that receives extra state funding and police protection, and Lamar has passionately and successfully pushed to expand that district further into the city, including the area of Jackson where his home is located.

During the 2023 session, Lamar successfully led the effort to pass legislation that created a separate CCID court system within Jackson — the Blackest large city in America — that will be entirely appointed by white state officials.

In October 2023, the CCID’s project advisory committee published a prioritized list of infrastructure projects that used an objective scoring process. The master plan did not identify Simwood Place as one of its priorities.

Rebekah Staples, the CCID committee chairwoman, told Mississippi Today that the Legislature used the organization as a pass-through for several infrastructure projects the committee members didn’t ask for, though she didn’t think that process was necessarily bad. She’s currently reviewing those projects.

While she respects the Legislature’s power to appropriate state dollars, Staples said one of her main goals going forward is to ensure lawmakers are informed of the committee’s scoring process and how it prioritizes road projects.

Ward 7 Jackson City Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay represents Simwood Place at the local level and is a member of the CCID committee. She said she did not ask lawmakers to spend money repaving the road and knew almost nothing about the project.

“If I had asked for this, I would have worked it through the city’s Public Works Department or the 1% sales tax committee,” Lindsay said.

The Department of Finance and Administration, the entity that will eventually disburse the money for the Jackson repaving project, has yet to release the funds to the CCID committee, so the work to improve the road has not begun.

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The post Quiet, well-paved Jackson cul-de-sac to get makeover thanks to powerful lawmaker who bought home there appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For many Mississippi lawmakers, Christmas comes again in March or April each year as they typically pass bills full of hundreds of millions of dollars in pet projects — referred to as a “Christmas tree” bill.

But the process of doling out these funds is more of a Bacchanalia and raw politics than good cheer.

And not all lawmakers, or communities, share in the largesse. Those in power tend to get more, as do those who help do the bidding of legislative leaders.

Some get squat, particularly House members who buck their leadership on key votes.

A community’s need for a project is typically far less a factor.

Some lawmakers, such as Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, who oversees Christmas tree spending in that chamber, really make out. He’s helped steer tens of millions of dollars to his rural county and hometown in recent years, even earmarking more than $7 million for improvements in and around the private country club neighborhood where he lives.

By late in the session, legislative leaders will have figured out how much extra cash is floating around the multi-billion dollar state budget — or in lean years how much the state can afford to borrow — for a Christmas tree bill. This typically ranges from $200 million to $400 million a year.

Lawmakers swarm, pushing to get all the bacon they can bring home to their districts for road projects, parks, courthouse renovations, museums — any capital projects not included in main appropriations bills or agency budgets.

It’s pork-barrel spending, not prioritized by statewide need or population, but by politics. It’s how a relatively affluent city or county can get $2 million to spruce up a sports complex, while a struggling city can be snubbed on its request for $2 million in badly needed sewerage repairs.

“It is raw politics,” said House Minority Leader Robert Johnson III, D-Natchez. “It’s a quid pro quo: Will you follow orders? Would you do what we ask, and have you been compliant? … It’s kind of used as punishment-reward, a carrot-stick type thing.”

Rep. Dan Eubanks, a Republican from Walls, is one of very few lawmakers who votes against most Christmas tree bills, particularly when they’ve involved borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars in lean years.

“If something’s for a core function of government, that’s one thing,” Eubanks said. “But when it’s, ‘Here, let’s build you an equestrian park or fund your private school’s band’ — there’s a lot of that that goes on.”

Legislative leaders keep tight control over who gets what added to the final Christmas tree bill, and this becomes a powerful political tool — both a carrot and a stick. A lawmaker who bucks the leadership on an important vote can have their projects denied. A lawmaker who goes along can be rewarded.

In the 122-member state House, in particular, the Christmas tree bill has been used by speakers of the House and their leadership teams to push through agendas and keep members in line.

“I got punished this last session,” Johnson said. “There have been drainage projects and road projects in my area that I’ve been getting partial funding for to try and build up, save until we have full funding, for a few years. Essentially I was cut completely off this past session … You would think, I think the public would think, that we are identifying where the greatest needs are.”

Eubanks said: “I haven’t really brought home much in the way of Christmas tree money. I have a neighborhood in my district that had water so bad it couldn’t be drunk, and it would stain clothes. The city couldn’t afford filtration. I wanted it put in a regular appropriation, but somehow it wound up in a bond bill. Since I vote against them, when all was said and done they gave the credit to a different legislator, who doesn’t represent the neighborhood. That’s what happens if you stand up and speak your conscience and vote your conscience.”

Eubanks said he voted for a Christmas tree-type bill this year, but only because it appeared to have mostly legitimate infrastructure projects and, more so, because it included badly needed work to help congestion on Interstate 55 in his area. 

“I have even voted against things that would have helped my district before,” Eubanks said. “… I would never go ask for money to put in a merry-go-’round or walking trail that would only benefit a few folks … I do remember years when they had things such as fixing a levy on private property and putting in new streetlights for a historic district and building a walking trail for an equestrian center. Those aren’t core functions of government.”

For some rank-and-file lawmakers, securing major funds for local projects is their main goal of a legislative session.

“It’s like what happens in D.C. (with Congress),” Eubanks said. “You justify your reason for being there by bringing the money home.”

In the House, Chairman Lamar, a top lieutenant of Speaker Jason White, has become de facto arbiter of the Christmas tree spending. Lamar’s committee handles state debt and in lean years Christmas tree bills are paid for by borrowing. But with state coffers full largely from federal pandemic relief spending in recent years, there has been at least a few hundred million dollars a year cash on hand for pet projects. Lamar has remained largely in charge of the spending that would normally flow through the Appropriations Committee.

And Lamar and his district have benefited greatly from his tasking. State spending on projects in rural Tate County and its cities including Senatobia has dwarfed spending for similar sized counties — and even spending for Jackson, the state’s largest and capital city. Over the last three years, Jackson received $5.9 million for earmarked projects. Tate County received $38.6 million.

“I think when you hold all the keys, people won’t question it,” Eubanks said, “because if you do, you won’t get anything … That’s part of the mindset, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of who holds the keys … Those in control of it seem to get all the things they want.”

Christmas tree projects get little vetting on their merits on the front end. But once they’re approved, they receive nearly no oversight. After the Legislature passes the hundreds of millions a year in spending, that’s usually the last most rank-and-file lawmakers ever see of it.

Once the Legislature approves the spending bill, the Department of Finance and Administration is tasked with disbursing the funds to hundreds of counties, cities and nonprofits around the state. 

DFA requires local organizations to sign a memorandum of understanding and to file quarterly reports on how they are spending the money. Marcy Scoggins, a spokesperson for DFA, said most local entities file their quarterly reports, and the agency eventually contacts them if they’re delinquent. 

But the department is essentially a repository. It has no legal authority to penalize local entities that don’t file the required reports, and it doesn’t scrutinize the work or spending. Other than the attorney general’s office or the state auditor’s office getting involved — and they rarely do — there’s virtually no way for DFA to ride herd on the work or programs being funded. 

A Christmas tree or similar bill can also be hundreds of pages long, and so full of wonky state code language and references to other bills that it’s hard for lawmakers outside of the leadership and budget team to know exactly what’s in it. 

Earmarks are routinely sneaked into it.

Lawmakers in the past have been surprised by spending they’ve approved, such as one year when some other lawmakers learned after the fact that when they approved a Mainstreet Mississippi grant fund, someone late in negotiations inserted language that said for the purpose of that fund, “Municipality means the city of Senatobia, Mississippi” instead of previous language that said any city of less than 15,000 people would qualify for the grants.

In recent years, it’s also one of the final things the Legislature passes during the session, often late at night when legislators are tired, angry at each other and ready to return home to their districts. This process can cause legislators to miss some of the line-items in the bills and provide almost no oversight or participate in legitimate debate on the bill.

Mississippi Today asked House Speaker Jason White, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Gov. Tate Reeves about the Christmas tree bill process and whether they consider it an efficient way to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It also asked the three Republican leaders about the projects Lamar has helped fund for his neighborhood.

White and a spokeswoman for Hosemann responded with written statements about the process, but neither commented on Lamar. Reeves’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

White noted that the projects House members submit are typically projects “that local governments have been unable to fund and the lawmaker has identified as a need in the community after hearing from their constituents.” He said the projects often include letters of support or visits to the Legislature by local officials “to express the gravity of the need.” He said that in the 2024 session, there were more than $1 billion in requests from House members.

“In my 13 sessions we have almost always had a capital projects bill, either funded through a bond bill or cash surpluses,” White said. “Under Republican leadership, the state has realized budget surpluses … With these surpluses, the Legislature has been able to cut taxes, make historical investments in education and our teachers, and the capital projects list has grown, often with a heavy emphasis on infrastructure and economic development projects.”

White said DFA oversees the use of the money the Legislature allocates for local projects “through a system of checks and balances” and a quarterly report and “local governments must comply with all state laws regarding procurement and bidding.”

White said: “In my first session as speaker, we did strive to have a more open and transparent appropriations process as we moved through the session. I applaud our chairmen for their shared commitment to increasing transparency in the process and I know the representatives support our effort to provide more time and solicit member input … We continually look for ways to provide greater transparency and accountability on spending of all taxpayer dollars.”

White, in his first term as speaker, has called for the Legislature to get more of its budgeting done earlier in the session and slow the process down so the rank-and-file have more time to scrutinize spending.

Leah Smith, spokeswoman for Hosemann, wrote: “We understand how important projects are for communities, especially small and rural communities … We also believe it is important to track these projects to ensure they are being completed in a timely manner and in the way prescribed by legislation.

“This summer it was brought to our attention for the first time that some entities are not submitting quarterly reports … with the Department of Finance and Administration,” Smith wrote. “We also learned many municipalities, some of which may have received projects, have not submitted their annual audit to or been audited by the state auditor as required (by law). We are committed to increasing transparency and accountability related to all projects.”

Smith said that Hosemann “has always been in favor of moving back deadlines to allow ample time for legislators to examine bills before they are moved for final passage, especially when they are appropriating significant taxpayer dollars.”

READ MORE: Click here to return to the series summary

The post It’s always Christmas in Senatobia: How a powerful rural lawmaker brings home millions appeared first on Mississippi Today.

State taxpayers have shelled out $7 million to improve the private country club neighborhood and golf course where one of Mississippi’s most powerful lawmakers lives.

State taxpayers are also on the hook to improve the quiet, already well-paved northeast Jackson cul-de-sac where House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar owns a home.

As Ways and Means Chairman, Lamar exerts enormous sway over how the $7 billion state budget is funded. He’s also become the House’s de facto arbiter of “Christmas tree” bills — hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on lawmakers’ pet projects for their districts.

Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia and one of House Speaker Jason White’s closest advisers, has been extremely successful at bringing home the bacon to his rural home district. He’s also helped secure millions of dollars for his own neighborhood in the process, and has worked in a couple of personal property deals amid the state projects.

A Mississippi Today investigation found Lamar helped secure millions in state taxpayer dollars to:

• Repave and widen Country Club Road, which runs in front of his Tate County house — in part to make it safer and easier for golf carts to traverse, according to the county engineer — and to build a traffic roundabout and 10 speed humps in a less than 2-mile stretch of the rural road.
• Improve drainage, build new cart paths and bridges, re-sod or do other work on the golf course and surrounding yards.
• Have the city of Senatobia buy the small water company that serves fewer than 200 homes in the country club neighborhood, then secure $2 million more in state money this year to improve the system.
• Make $400,000 in improvements to a Northeast Jackson cul-de-sac where he owns one of 14 homes – a project that doesn’t appear to be any Jackson leaders’ priority as many capital city thoroughfares suffer from neglect.

Below is a list of stories that are part of Mississippi Today’s investigation. They include a long takeout on the Senatobia projects Lamar helped secure, a story about $400,000 earmarked for his quiet cul-de-sac in Jackson, the system of legislative spending that allows these types of projects to pass and information about how we reported this investigation.

The post ‘Trey Way’: Millions in taxpayer funds flow to powerful lawmaker’s country club and Jackson neighborhoods appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today political editor Geoff Pender and reporter Taylor Vance investigated state-funded projects that benefited Rep. Trey Lamar’s neighborhood and home district.

Pender and Vance cover the Mississippi Legislature, with Pender covering Lamar since he was first elected to the House in 2011 and Vance covering Lamar since 2019. Over the past few years, Lamar has risen in the House leadership ranks, first as a close sergeant to former Speaker of the House Philip Gunn and now as one of current Speaker of the House Jason White’s closest confidants.

Pender and Vance, as two members of Mississippi Today’s Politics Team, closely cover this current crop of House leadership.

To aid our investigation, we filed public records requests with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration, the Tate County Board of Supervisors and the city of Senatobia. We pulled property deeds from both Tate County and Hinds County, and we closely assessed engineering blueprints and other government-approved plans for the state-funded projects in question.

We interviewed dozens of people in Tate County and in Jackson — many of whom declined to talk on the record out of fear that speaking publicly about Lamar and his politically powerful family could harm their livelihoods in some way.

We traveled multiple times to Tate County to see the state-funded projects ourselves, taking photos, videos and even aerial shots with a drone. We spent time in Lamar’s Jackson neighborhood, too, trying to get a clearer picture of why and how the state spent money on a sleepy, well-paved cul-de-sac. 

We worked the phones for weeks, making dozens and dozens of calls — many of which went unanswered or ignored. We talked with state elected officials, local elected officials and everyday residents who had some interest in the expenditures in question. We also reached out to people in the Facebook group called “TateCounty Watchdogs,” a citizen-formed group with more than 2,000 members that has publicly questioned some of the same state-funded projects.

We asked for comment from both Speaker of the House Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann about the system in which these legislative pet projects are awarded. Neither would comment directly about Lamar and the specific projects we investigated, but both sent lengthy statements about the process. You can read those full statements by clicking this link.

We also reached out to Gov. Tate Reeves, who signed the projects into law and routinely line-item vetoes legislative pet projects he disagrees with. Reeves’ office did not respond.

And, of course, we spent a considerable amount of time talking with and trying to talk more with Lamar himself about the projects and their purpose. Lamar granted one telephone interview with us, and he cut a second phone interview short after expressing frustration with the questions. After that, we sent him a written list of questions about the projects, and he replied with a lengthy written statement that we have quoted throughout the series.

To most easily access the multiple parts of the series, click on this link for our summary story, which will serve as your guide. You can also follow the links below to read the series.

READ MORE: Click here to return to the series summary

The post How we reported our investigation of Rep. Trey Lamar’s state-funded projects appeared first on Mississippi Today.

MARQUETTE, Iowa – It was just before sunset on the Mississippi River, the day’s last bits of golden light dancing on the water, when four members of the band Big Blue Sky picked up their instruments for one of their defining songs.

During the summer, the group plays Friday nights for Maiden Voyage Tours, a northeast Iowa riverboat company. Its 40-some passengers that evening had been sharing bottles of wine and hearing tales of Mississippi River history as they cruised along, speedboats occasionally racing by on either side.

Then the boat captain pulled over to an island and cut the motor. It was time for the water song.

Moving and unforgettable, “Water Song” urges listeners to think about how they treat the natural resource, so vital for life on earth. The tune was written in 2015 and came together in minutes, recalled Big Blue Sky singers and songwriters Jon Stravers and Sophia Landis. Much of the group’s music is about the river and the surrounding region, a place of curiosity, adventure and solace for Stravers and his late son, Jon-Jon.

Big Blue Sky’s work adds to a centuries-long tradition of music inspired and transported by the Mississippi River. The river’s role as a major shipping artery and a force of nature, as well as its historical and cultural significance to the nation, make it an easy thing to write about. And riverboats not altogether different from this one carried songs north and south, spreading jazz and the delta blues across the heart of the country.

Most importantly, the music describes people’s personal connections to the river — something intensely evident in Stravers’ words on the boat.

In song, he and Landis rhapsodized. In speaking, he kept it simple: “This is a good stretch of the river. It’s important. And people love it.”

Mississippi River moved and shaped jazz, delta blues

Perhaps no style of music is as intertwined with the Mississippi River as the delta blues, rooted in the musical traditions of enslaved Black Americans who were forced to work long hours in the fields of the Mississippi Delta region. Though slavery had technically ended, many Black Americans remained in unfair and oppressive working conditions at the turn of the 20th century.

Unlike gospel music sung in church, blues reflected their real lives and real feelings, said Maie Smith, group tour manager and operations manager at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

“Delta blues music is a music that works from the heart to the outside,” Smith said. “It starts with your most inner being, and helps to lift you up and rise you above whatever circumstances you were in.”

Lots of delta blues musicians worked on the river, Smith said, including those forced to build levees to protect fields from floodwaters. They endured the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, which killed upwards of a thousand people and displaced almost 640,000 people from Illinois to Louisiana. Many songs were written about this historic disaster and other river floods, including Charley Patton’s “High Water Everywhere,” Barbecue Bob’s “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues,” Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” and Big Bill Broonzy’s “Southern Flood Blues.”

But the river also provided opportunities for blues musicians to travel, taking their songs with them. Blues and later jazz music came north to Memphis, Kansas City and Chicago, building a following and mixing with other music styles. Today, blues riffs underpin much of American popular music, Smith said, like rock and roll and hip hop.

Music was moving on the Mississippi even before then — during the so-called “golden age of steamboats” in the 19th century. Thousands of steamboats traveled the river and its major tributaries during that time, said Steve Marking, a river historian and guest performer for American Cruise Lines on its Mississippi River cruises.

The boats took on passengers as well as freight, and companies sought to hire the best musicians to entice people to pay to board, Marking said. Later, even influential jazz musician Louis Armstrong performed for a few years on the Streckfus Steamboat Line.

Other forms of music that arose and were popularized on the river include ragtime in St. Louis and river folk music that featured banjo, fiddle and percussion. Dixieland, a form of jazz, and country music also owe a debt to the river. 

Why capture the Mississippi River in song?

Rivers in general “have inspired almost as many songs as love,” Marking said.

Many people have some sort of connection with them, whether it’s traveling them by boat or simply watching them run. Marking pointed to the song “Watchin’ the River Go By,” by John Hartford, which depicts two people who get together each night on the porch to watch the Ohio River. It’s an experience anyone, young or old, can relate to, he said (well, maybe not completely — the people in the song do so in the nude).

But more than lakes, forests or prairies, rivers are captured in song over and over again. Why?

It could be their heavy symbolism. For Marking, rivers signify the passage of time, reminding us of our journey through life.

“If you’re standing on the shore,” he said, “upstream is the past, downstream is the future.”

Rivers also make a connection — between places, or even between the past and the future.

The musicians who still travel the river today are helping make that connection, Marking said, including the ones who make up Big Blue Sky. He described taking the boat tour and listening to them play “Water Song” as “one of the top five events of my entire life.”

It’s easy to see why. The group’s music both honors the river’s musical traditions and adds something new: an eye toward its ecological importance. In between songs, passengers got to hear about Stravers’ decades of bird research on this stretch of the river, including monitoring of the cerulean warbler, one of the rarest nesting warblers in Iowa. They stopped to watch a beaver on an island waddle through the sand to make his way back to the water. And they were granted what the captain called one of the best sunsets of the summer: a bright, show-stopping pink.

Though most of their songs evolve over time, Stravers said, “Water Song” pretty much gets played the same every time. The exception is in his echo to Landis’s main melody, where he regularly inserts the name of whatever water body they’re playing on to remind listeners they need it to live.

Sacred Mississippi River water, indeed. 

Want to hear more? Check out this Mississippi River playlist!

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. 

The post Rollin’ on the river: How the Mississippi flows through song and still inspires today appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Turnage Drug Store survived both world wars, the Great Depression, the rise of chain pharmacies and the decline in popularity of the soda fountain. 

But the 119-year-old Water Valley pharmacy may now be facing its greatest threat yet: untenable reimbursement rates and non-negotiable contracts from pharmacy benefit managers, said co-owner Robert Turnage. 

Turnage is one of many independent pharmacy owners in Mississippi who fear that if more stringent regulations are not imposed on pharmacy benefit managers, their businesses – some of the most accessible health care providers, particularly in rural parts of the state – may be forced to close. 

“Everyone here is on the verge of closing their doors if something drastic is not done,” Bob Lomenick, the owner and pharmacist at Tyson Drugs, Inc. in Holly Springs, told lawmakers at the House Select Committee on Prescription Drugs meeting Aug. 21 at the Capitol. The meeting room was filled with independent pharmacists who came from around the state to plead their case with legislators.

Pharmacy benefit managers are private companies that serve as the middlemen between pharmacies, drug manufacturers and insurers. They negotiate pricing and conditions for access to drugs, process prescription claims and manage retail pharmacy networks. 

A Federal Trade Commission report published in July sounded alarm bells about the companies’ “extraordinarily opaque” business practices and the considerable influence they exert upon independent pharmacies, or retail pharmacies not owned by a publicly traded company or affiliated with a large chain. 

Pharmacy benefit managers’ anti-competitive business practices have increased prescription drug costs and diminished access to medicine and patient choice about which pharmacy to patronize, the report said. 

U.S. Congress is also investigating the impact of pharmacy benefit managers’ business practices. 

There are about 380 independent pharmacies in Mississippi, said Robert Dozier, the executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacy Association, an organization that advocates for the interests of 180 pharmacy members.

A significant portion of Mississippi’s population, especially in rural areas where chain pharmacies are less likely to exist, is reliant on independent pharmacies, said Meagan Rosenthal, an associate professor in the University of Mississippi’s Department of Pharmacy Administration. 

A pharmacy closure in a rural area is likely to create a pharmacy desert, or an area with limited or no access to a pharmacy. Research has shown that pharmacy closures have negative impacts on patients’ health, especially in medically underserved areas.  

Over 300 pharmacies closed nationwide in 2023, said Joel Kurzman, the director of state government affairs for the National Community Pharmacists Association, a national organization that advocates for independent pharmacies. 

“It’s a startling figure,” he said. 

Shrinking reimbursements

Sharon Bonck, a pharmacist at Sartin’s Discount Drugs in Gulfport, said the rates pharmacies are paid for dispensing prescription drugs to patients with health insurance have dwindled over the past 10 years. In the past two or three years, however, the rates have become “disastrous” for business. 

Some prescriptions yield negative, or “underwater,” reimbursements, or payments from health insurance plans that are less than the pharmacy’s cost to acquire the drug. Others don’t earn a profit high enough to meet the pharmacy’s average operating expenses.

Pharmacy benefit managers set reimbursement rates for pharmacies by contract. But independent pharmacies often do not have the leverage to negotiate the terms of the contracts.

“I’ve never, never, not one time, been able to negotiate a contract,” said Lomenick. “It’s take it or leave it. If I don’t take it, I won’t have patients coming into my store.” 

Independent pharmacies are faced with a difficult decision: sign a contract that may not adequately compensate them for their service, or turn it down and lose customers. 

As reimbursement payments for some health insurance plans have waned, pharmacists have begun to more often choose the latter. 

Russell Love, the owner of Love’s Pharmacy, a chain of three pharmacies on the coast, said he stopped filling prescriptions for patients with TRICARE, a health insurance program for military service members and their families, and Magnolia Health’s Ambetter health insurance this year, also due to low reimbursement rates. Beginning in 2025, he will not accept Medicare Part D plans. 

“A lot of veterans can’t get their meds at their local pharmacy,” said Todd Dear, associate director of the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy, at the legislative committee hearing Aug. 21. 

TRICARE prescription claims are managed by Express Scripts, one the three largest pharmacy benefit managers in the country. Together, CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx managed 79 percent of prescription drug claims for about 270 million Americans in 2023, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s report. 

These three pharmacy benefit managers also own mail order and specialty pharmacies, health insurance plans, health care providers and companies that market and sell drugs, giving them “significant power over prescription drug access and prices,” wrote the federal agency’s findings. 

The report also indicated that in some cases, pharmacy benefit managers reimburse their affiliate pharmacies at higher rates for specialty, high-cost drugs than for unaffiliated pharmacies.

Express Scripts executives told lawmakers that pharmacy benefit managers work to negotiate rebates with drug manufacturers that result in cost savings for employers who sponsor health plans. 

“Pharmacy access is vital,” said Tony Grillo, Express Scripts’ vice president for supply chain finance. “We do need these independent pharmacists. There are a lot of communities in the state that are small and rural. There’s a lot of communities in this country that are small and rural. We need these pharmacies in our network. It’s not in our interest to put these folks out of business.”

Low reimbursement rates also impact what drugs Mississippians can access at independent pharmacies, like brand name drugs for diabetes and weight loss, including insulin, antidepressants and inhalers. 

GLP-1 drugs, which are used to treat type 2 diabetes and weight loss, have some of the most untenable reimbursement rates, said pharmacist Michelle Little, the owner of Freedom Pharmacy in Hattiesburg. The loss for pharmacies, paired with supply shortages, makes them difficult for patients to access.

Mississippi has some of the highest diabetes and obesity rates in the country. Fifteen percent of Mississippians have been diagnosed with diabetes, and 40% are obese. 

Little said she has been forced to turn patients away due to low reimbursement rates. 

“It breaks our heart,” she said. “…We’re not able to service our patients and customers like we have been in the past.”

Limited health care access

Pharmacies may choose not to fill a prescription due to low reimbursement rates, but in other cases, pharmacy benefit managers restrict which pharmacies insured patients can visit by creating pharmacy networks. 

Robert Turnage said some of his long-time patients’ insurance plans no longer allow them to fill their prescriptions at Turnage Drug Store. For Water Valley residents, that means a 60-minute round trip drive to Oxford, the closest town with major chain pharmacies. 

“That absolutely has consequences for patients,” said Rosenthal, who said patients may choose to go without their medication to avoid driving long distances. 

Pharmacies that participate in pharmacy benefit manager-designed networks usually agree to accept lower payments in exchange for a higher volume of patients, who are required to use an in-network pharmacy. 

Pharmacists fear being kicked out of pharmacy benefit managers’ networks as retaliation for lodging complaints with the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy, the board’s executive director Susan McCoy told lawmakers Aug. 21.

But more and more, she said, pharmacists are coming forward due to the precarious position of their business. 

“It’s getting desperate times,” McCoy said. “Our pharmacies are starting to come to us and say, ‘you know, it doesn’t matter if I get retaliated against, because I’m not going to be here anyway. Go ahead and do what you need to do to take action against the PBMs.’” 

Reform attempts in Mississippi

Three states have passed laws setting reimbursement floors for prescription drugs and requiring transparency of drug pricing, said Kurzman. Several other states have regulations for their state health plans. 

The Mississippi Legislature passed a law in 2020 that gave the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy additional authority to ensure that pharmacy benefit managers are following the law, including levying fines. 

The board completed an audit of Optum Rx this year – the first pharmacy benefit manager the board has audited – but has not yet released its findings.

It took several years for the board to hire staff to carry out the law and receive approval for budget increases due to the high cost of audits, said McCoy. 

But independent pharmacists say the law isn’t enough – setting minimum reimbursement rates and increasing price transparency are desperately needed reforms to ensure that pharmacies stay afloat. 

For the past several years, state lawmakers have proposed legislation to further regulate pharmacy benefit managers.

In 2023, a bill that would have set minimum reimbursements for prescriptions at the national average drug acquisition cost, or NADAC, died in the House Insurance Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerry Turner, R-Baldwyn. 

NADAC is a price index that approximates the amount pharmacies pay for prescription drugs. 

But pharmacists argue NADAC as a baseline is not enough, because it does not factor in pharmacists’ dispensing and operational costs. Arkansas, which uses a NADAC pricing model, will require pharmacy benefit managers to include dispensing fees in their reimbursements to pharmacies, as a result of an emergency rule passed in September.

A 2024 bill that would have increased pricing transparency and prohibited pharmacy benefit managers from retaliating against pharmacies or charging insurance plans or patients more than the amount they paid pharmacies for a prescription died during the legislative session.

The House Select Committee on Prescription Drugs will make recommendations to the state Legislature after several more hearings. 

“I’m optimistic that the State of Mississippi is going to do something,” said pharmacist Chris Bonner, the owner of Chris’ Pharmacy in Columbus. “It’s going to be too late for some people if they don’t do something soon.” 

The post ‘Desperate times’: Independent pharmacies fear closure, due in part to pharmacy benefit managers appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lance Evans, the state’s new superintendent of education, said if private schools receive public money they should be held to the same standards as public schools.

“I am going to be very clear — I am a public educator,” Evans said Monday in response to a question about vouchers during a lunch meeting of the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government/Capitol Press Corps. “Bottom line — never doubt that. I support public schools.”

But if the Mississippi Legislature adopts some type of voucher system to send public funds to private schools and it is upheld by the courts, Evans said he would follow those guidelines.

But he said if that should happen, “My goal is to make sure every student has a quality education … I do believe if one single dollar of public money goes into a private school, then every single child in that school has to be subjected to the same assessment of every single student in public school. What I will tell you — that is not just the opinion of Lance Evans. That is the opinion of any superintendent you talk to, any principal.”

If the private schools receive public funds, they also should be mandated – just like the public schools – to accept all students interested in enrolling despite any issue that might make the child more costly to educate.

 “We all have to be held to the same measure. That is the bottom line,” Evans said

Evans, a Mantachie native who previously served as superintendent of the New Albany School District in Northeast Mississippi, was selected in December by the state Board of Education as Mississippi’s superintendent of education. He was confirmed by the Legislature during the 2024 session in April with no dissenting votes, replacing Carey Wright who resigned in June 2022.

Evans assumed his new duties in July.

In recent years as surrounding states enhanced their school voucher programs, there has been growing pressure on Mississippi’s Republican-dominated Legislature to do the same. Those exerting the pressure, though, have made no attempt to change the state Constitution that states clearly that public funds are prohibited from being directed to private schools.

Evans did not address the constitutional language.

While reiterating he would work within the parameters established by the Legislature, he stressed, “make no bones about it. You can write it anywhere you need to write it.  I am a public educator, every day, 365 days a year.”

The post New superintendent: Private schools receiving public money should be held to public education standards appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When Kevin Yu, a 26-year-old Taiwanese golf pro, first entered the gates of the Country Club of Jackson for the Sanderson Farms Championship last week, his dad, Tommy, was driving.

“My dad pulled into the first empty parking spot he saw,” Kevin Yu said. “I told him we couldn’t park there because there was a sign that said the spot was reserved for past champions.”

With no hesitation, Tommy Yu began backing the rental car out and replied to his son, “That’s OK, then we will park in this spot next year.”

Now then, here is the rest of that story: Kevin Yu, whose real name is Yu Chun-an, can park anywhere he wants to park at next year’s Sanderson Farms Championship at CCJ. He earned that privilege by shooting a final round 67, then winning a one-hole playoff with Beau Hossler to claim the first prize of $1,368,000 and his first PGA TOUR victory. The victory also means a two-year tour exemption and entry into The Masters, the Players Championship and the PGA Championship.

Yu did it the hard way. He came from two shots behind in the final round and birdied the difficult, 500-yard par-4 18th hole twice – first to force the tie with Hossler and then to claim the playoff victory. That’s right: He birdied perhaps the most difficult hole on the course twice, back-to-back, with the championship on the line.

“It is a dream come true for me, something I have dreamed about since I was like five years old,” Yu said. “This is the dream of all golfers, to win on the PGA Tour. To do it with my parents (Tommy and Eileen) here is really special.”

Kevin Yu’s dad is a golf pro in Taiwan and introduced his son to the sport at an early age and began teaching him at age 5. He taught him well. Kevin won his first tournament at age 7, beat his father for the first time at age 9 and began competing internationally at age 13.

He earned a golf scholarship to Arizona State, where he is the second-most accomplished golfer in that school’s rich golf history behind somebody named Jon Rahm. This is Yu’s third year on the PGA Tour and third time to play in Mississippi’s only PGA Tour Tournament. He finished tied for 19th in 2022 and missed the 36-hole cut last year. He said he loves everything about the tournament.

“I like the whole environment here,” Yu said. “I like the course layout. I think it suits me. The greens are so pure and they are fast and I like that, too. The atmosphere is easy-going, the course is great.”

Yu came here last week, thinking he was about to play in the last-ever Sanderson Farms Championship because of an announcement weeks ago that the Laurel-based poultry company was ending its sponsorship after a 12-year run.

Said Yu, “I was really sad, because I do love this place and this tournament.”

Then came Friday’s out-of-the-blue news that Sanderson Farms was extending its sponsorship for one more year. “I was so happy to hear that news,” Yu said. “Now I can come back and defend my title.”

And with preferred parking, he might have added.

Yu becomes the third Taiwanese player to win on golf’s most lucrative tour, following first T.C. Chen (1987 Los Angeles Open) and C. T. Pan (2019 Heritage Classic).

“I think this means a lot for all Taiwanese,” Yu said. “I feel like I can be an example. We don’t have a lot of golf courses in Taiwan and the conditions are just OK, not perfect. So I just show them that we can do it by working really hard and dreaming big.”

Yu shot three rounds of 66 and then Sunday’s 67. He did it all in a easy-going manner, smiling and chatting often with course volunteers with his playing partner Bud Cauley in the next-to-last group.

“I was really calm all week even to the last few holes today,” Yu said. He indicated his parents might have had something to do with that.

Tommy and Eileen Yu flew to Jackson from Taiwan last week, and Yu is mighty glad they did.

“I really don’t think I could this without my parents,” he said.

The post For PGA Tour champion Kevin Yu, father knew best and he called it appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Two federally qualified health centers in the Delta will receive a total of $3.6 million over four years from the federal government to expand and strengthen their maternal health services. 

Federally qualified health centers are nonprofits that provide health care to under-insured and uninsured patients and receive enhanced reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. They offer a sliding fee scale for services for patients.

Delta Health Center, with 17 locations throughout the Delta, and G.A. Carmichael Family Health Center, with six locations across central Mississippi, beat out applicants from several southeastern and midwestern states.

Two organizations in Tennessee and one in Alabama were also awarded funding this year. 

The grant is focused on improving access to perinatal care in rural communities in the greater Delta region – which includes 252 counties and parishes within the eight states of Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).  

It’s the first of its kind in terms of goal and region, said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson.

“We have not had a targeted maternal health initiative for the Delta before this program,” Johnson told Mississippi Today. “We’ve had a national competition for rural areas focused on maternal health, but what we were able to do here, in partnership with congressional leaders from the Delta region, was secure some resources that would go directly to the Delta region to be able to address this very important need.”

Johnson said Mississippi applicants stood out because of their ability to identify the most pressing issues facing mothers and babies. 

“What we saw from the applicants and awardees in Mississippi was a real commitment to prenatal care and early engagement in prenatal care, reducing preterm births, as well as expanding access to midwives and community-based doula services,” she said. “And all of those pieces together really resonate with the ways we’ve been looking at how to address maternal health services.”

At G.A. Carmichael Family Health Center, the funds will be directed mainly to expanding services in the three Delta counties in which the center has clinics – Humphreys, Yazoo and Leflore.

Yazoo and Humphreys counties are maternity care deserts – meaning they have no hospitals providing obstetric care, no OB-GYNs and no certified nurse midwives – and Greenwood Leflore Hospital closed its labor and delivery unit in 2022. While OB-GYNs still practice in Leflore County, mothers have to travel outside of it to deliver their babies.

Solving the transportation issue will be a top priority, according to the center’s CEO James L. Coleman Jr.

“We have situations where mothers have to travel 100 or so miles just for maternal health care,” Coleman said. “Especially in times of delivery, especially in times of emergency, that is unacceptable.”

Health care deserts pervade Mississippi, where 60% of counties have no OB-GYN and nearly half of rural hospitals are at risk of closing. 

Inadequate access to prenatal care has been linked to preterm births, in which Mississippi leads the nation. Preterm births can lead to chronic health problems and infant mortality – in which Mississippi also ranks highest. 

That’s why Delta Health Center is committed to using its funds to work together with affiliated organizations – including Delta Health System; Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center; Aaron E. Henry Community Health Center; and Converge – to “move the dial” on maternal health indicators across the Delta region, said John Fairman, the center’s CEO. 

“We face many challenges including the recruitment and retention of OB-GYNs to the area,” Fairman said, “and will be exploring models of care that are being implemented in other areas of the country that can be adopted to provide greater access and efficiencies for perinatal health care – with the overall goal of significantly decreasing rates of low birthweight and preterm birth in the Delta.”

The United States currently has the highest rate of maternal deaths among high-income countries, and Johnson said this grant is part of a continued effort from the Biden administration to change that. 

“The president and the vice president have made maternal health a priority since day one and have really called on all of us across the Department of Health and Human Services to lean in and identify where we can put resources and policy,” Johnson said. “One death is one death too many.”

The post Two Delta health centers awarded competitive federal grant for maternal care appeared first on Mississippi Today.