Hundreds of people gathered at the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum on Friday morning to share their opinions on potential changes the Mississippi Department of Education is making to the state’s social studies standards. The pushback was so strong that the department announced it was walking back much of the proposed changes.
Last month the State Board of Education began the process to revise Mississippi’s K-12 social studies standards and received passionate feedback on social media. The department periodically updates the standards following feedback from teachers, with the last revision occurring in 2018. MDE said teachers felt some standards needed more clarity while others had excessive examples, leading to the 2021 revisions.
At the beginning of the hearing, MDE officials said based on the feedback they had already received, they would not be removing the lists of examples from the standards, including lists of names, organizations, and legislation and court cases.
Marian Allen, executive director of the Laurel-Jones County Black History Museum, said she came prepared to make a lot of persuasive arguments, but “we’ve already clarified that the people’s names will not be stricken from the standards, so he has really saved me a lot of time.”
Mississippi Rising Coalition President Lea Campbell expresses concerns, and asks questions regarding inclusivity when proposed revisions were made to academic standards for social studies. Campbell, educators and other members of the community attended a Mississippi Dept. of Education public comment hearing concerning the proposed changes. The hearing was held at the Sparkmann Auditorium in Jackson, Friday, Jan. 28, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Angela Broussard said when she reviewed the standards, “it became clear that the basic tenets of family, our nation’s founding documents, our nation’s true history and the development of a healthy patriotism was selectively and calculatingly removed …The earliest days of our nation were framed upon the premise that people were taught to adhere to the word of God as a light to the path and a boundary to be governed by.”
The audience responded with loud applause after Broussard spoke.
Several speakers addressed their issues with critical race theory, including Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando, who is the author of a Senate bill that would prohibit teaching the subject. McLendon said his bill ensures that no child will be told they are “inherently superior or inferior” based on any demographic information.
Others spoke about the importance of ensuring specific instances of racial discrimination throughout Mississippi’s history are included in the standards for students to learn about and discuss.
Alexandria Drake, a U.S. history teacher at JPS-Tougaloo Early College High School, brought about ten of her students to observe the hearing. When asked what they thought, her students discussed some people straying from the standards in their comments, and the importance of respecting all religions in a public school setting.
“I have been really disgusted today because I have seen and heard so much hatred,” said Ivory Phillips, dean emeritus at Jackson State University, who has been teaching since 1963. “ I was hoping that we were coming more and more together.”
The proposed revisions were put out for public comment when the state Board of Education approved them last month, and anyone can submit their opinion on them. To submit in writing, mail to Jen Cornett at 359 N. West Street, Post Office Box 771, Jackson, MS 39205-0771, or email jcornett@mdek12.org. The deadline to submit is 5 p.m. on Feb. 4. Public comments will be presented to the board for discussion at the March 17 board meeting.
Mississippi’s eight public universities got hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to keep their doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly two years later, it’s hard to get a clear picture of what the universities did with those dollars, despite reporting requirements from the U.S. Department of Education agency tasked with overseeing the funds.
A review by Mississippi Today found several factors contribute to the patchwork transparency and accountability:
Quarterly reports tracking this spending, which are supposed to be maintained on a university’s website, are often not posted online.
Millions of dollars are recorded on the forms in vague categories, such as “campus safety” or “housing,” with no supporting notes describing what the money was actually used for.
Spending totals detailed by the universities do not match what is reported in the database maintained by the federal government, making it hard for students and faculty to determine the true amount spent by their university.
The stakes are high in accounting for these dollars in real time, because they were intended to help colleges, and the students they serve, to endure financial challenges due to the pandemic, said K.B. Melear, a professor of higher education finance at University of Mississippi.
“These monies are incredibly important for Mississippi institutions of higher education, especially now … as we move through the various challenges faced by the pandemic,” he said.
This uneven accounting is likely not unique to Mississippi. Last year, ProPublica explored how the federal government’s limited tracking has frustrated efforts by K-12 officials across the country to follow how their districts spent these COVID funds.
The U.S. Department of Educationdid not return Mississippi Today’s request for comment by press time.
The money in question comes from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, or HEERF, a dedicated pool of dollars in each of the federal government’s three pandemic stimulus packages.
For their part, Mississippi’s eight public universities received $508 million. The universities were required to put at least half of that into students’ pockets in the form of direct payments.
The remaining funds — around $250 million — could be used for “institutional expenses” due to COVID-19, a broad category that encompasses spending on personal protective equipment, dorm closures, or technology for virtual learning.
Every three months, the Office of Postsecondary Education, a U.S. Department of Education agency, requires colleges and universities to publish quarterly reports in the form of spreadsheets to account for their institutional spending. In theory, this provides a clear picture of how a university has spent its institutional dollars. The spreadsheets contain 16 categories the universities can use to classify their spending, such as “providing or subsidizing the costs of high speed internet to students or faculty to transition to an online environment.”
“The expenditure of funds has been keeping with both the letter and the spirit of the packages established by the federal government,” said Caron Blanton, director of communications for the Institutions of Higher Learning. “As new funding programs, distributing the funds often required Herculean efforts to create new forms, programming, processes, and communications efforts to get the funds in the hands of students as quickly as possible while ensuring full compliance with the federal guidelines.”
The universities are supposed to go into further detail about how they’re spending the money in certain categories, but many neglected to do so. For one category, labeled “other uses,” the form instructs universities to provide additional information. Of the $7.6 million allocated to “other uses,” the universities did not provide information for about $3.3 million, according to a Mississippi Today analysis.
In one another, the University of Southern Mississippi recorded spending $6.08 million on “replacing lost revenue” from non-tuition sources in a December 2021 report. That category can encompass anything from spending on a canceled theatrical performance to lost parking lot revenue. But nowhere in the report does USM say what, specifically, it spent that $6 million on.
It can be hard to get a clear picture even when the universities do describe their spending. In a September 2021 report, Mississippi State University said it put $3.8 million toward lost revenue. In the column meant for more detail, MSU simply put “Housing and university florist.”
Even though the quarterly spreadsheets are supposed to be easily accessible on a university’s website, that is often not the case in Mississippi — another barrier to transparency. Mississippi Today had to ask for quarterly reports that were not posted online from the following universities: Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi. As of this article’s publication, Mississippi Today is waiting on two reports from Alcorn and Jackson State.
These reporting requirements are lax in part because the federal government’s goal with these stimulus funds was to help students stay in college and help colleges keep their doors open, said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education finance at University of Tennessee.
“People were worried about colleges laying off employees or closing,” he said. “The main priority wasn’t necessarily tremendous oversight — it was to get the money out the door and have enough oversight that colleges aren’t ripping off taxpayers.”
To Kelchen’s point, it’s also hard to determine the total amount of HEERF funds spent by Mississippi universities.
The U.S. Department of Education maintains a database, called the “transparency portal,” of all education funds allocated by the three pandemic relief bills. The goal of the database is “to provide the public with transparent, searchable, and understandable data.”
According to the transparency portal, Mississippi universities have spent about $129 million in federal stimulus funds on institutional expenses as of Nov. 30, 2021.
The quarterly reports paint a different picture. Mississippi Today added up the spending reported in spreadsheets from all eight universities. According to Mississippi Today’s analysis, the universities collectively spent $198 million in institutional funds as of Dec. 31, 2021 — a $70 million gap.
The numbers don’t match for individual universities, either. A review of every quarterly report posted by Mississippi University for Women shows the school spent about $2.3 million in institutional funds as of Sept. 30, 2021. The U.S. Department of Education says MUW spent about $1.2 million as of Nov. 31, 2021.
Tyler Wheat, MUW’s communications director, told Mississippi Today that the quarterly reports are submitted to the department and the difference in numbers is primarily due to timing.
“Our quarterly reports on the website are correct,” he said. The U.S. Department of Education database “only shows the amount they have paid in reimbursement” which “are not requested until after the expenses have incurred.”
Aubree Jordan of Madison has suffered from endometriosis since she was in middle school. She was a regular patient at The Woman’s Clinic in Madison, and saw her doctor up to five times a year.
But after a surgery at the clinic as a college student, she incurred a bill she was slowly paying as she was able. Before she could, though, she said she received a letter from her doctor stating she couldn’t come to her upcoming appointment until the bill had been paid in full.
Jordan’s experience was not a unique one — and certainly not at The Woman’s Clinic, where triage nurses review patient records and play interference. If the patient has a past due bill, nurses alert the billing office, and an employee then calls the patient and asks for payment before a nurse can return her call. This holds true even in cases where the patient has indicated on the phone prompt that their call is an emergency.
The clinic administrator for The Woman’s Clinic did not respond to Mississippi Today’s requests for clarification on the clinic’s policies.
According to experts, this practice is not illegal and may be happening more and more often. And it is not just limited to this provider, as evidenced by testimonies from multiple women who spoke with Mississippi Today and use other clinics.
“My understanding is there’s no common law duty or even an ethical imperative outside of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (which applies only to hospitals) that requires a physician to treat every patient,” said Roy Mitchell, executive director of the Mississippi Health Advocacy Policy Program, which works on health policy issues and advocates for consumers, especially those who are low income.
But rising health care costs and the added complications of insurance reimbursements have brought the issue to the forefront, Mitchell said.
“Do physicians have a duty to treat? Yes, but only on a professional, altruistic level without any legal force at this point,” he said.
Ken Cleveland, the executive director of the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure, said in a statement to Mississippi Today it would be impossible to determine whether any violation occurred without a complete investigation.
“Typically, the Board does not get involved in billing issues. However, the situation you described (Jordan and others’ experience) might merit further investigation if a formal complaint was filed,” said Cleveland.
Charles Miles, the past president and current member of the Board of Medical Licensure, was more forthcoming.
“That’s not right,” Miles said after hearing about the patients’ stories. “I am in OB-GYN (obstetrics and gynecology), and that’s not how we do things.”
Endometriosis is a painful condition that occurs when tissue similar to that which normally lines the inside of the uterus grows outside the uterus. When Jordan was a young teen, her doctor prescribed her a contraceptive that helps control the growth of the tissue and the pain associated with it.
But after two surgical procedures in subsequent years, Jordan, then a full-time college student with a part-time job, was struggling to pay off her bill at the clinic.
One day in 2017, the same year she had her laparoscopy, she received a letter from her doctor via certified mail at her family’s home — and was startled by the method of delivery.
The letter said that unless she was able to pay off her balance, which she remembers as being less than $2,000, she would be unable to come to her upcoming scheduled appointment. She had been expecting to get refills of her prescription at that visit.
“I called them up at the office and said, ‘Look, I cannot stop my birth control — (my doctor) has me on a particular birth control that makes my endometriosis not flare, and I can’t just stop taking it,’” Jordan, who is now 26, said.
She said her doctor had also prescribed her an antidepressant following her father’s death — another reason why money was tight for her family at the time.
Clinic employees didn’t offer her a payment plan and said her balance had to be paid in full to continue seeing her doctor. Jordan said she then wrote her doctor a letter and mailed it to him. Days and weeks passed, and she never heard back.
She eventually found a new OB-GYN, but there was a wait before she could be seen. The ordeal resulted in her going months without the medication she’d been taking for the condition she had since she was in middle school.
As expected, the endometriosis worsened.
“As soon as they (the new doctor) got me in, I was doubled over in pain,” she said. “They finally scheduled my surgery. I was missing classes because I was in so much pain.”
The policy is still in place at The Woman’s Clinic, which is an independent, private practice that rents space from Baptist Memorial Hospital and uses the hospital for admission of patients.
Jacqueline Rudder, also of Madison, was shocked after she called her doctor during a medical crisis in early January 2022. Just as the menu prompt directed her when she called, she pressed “1” to indicate it was an emergency and left a message with the nurses’ station.
Within minutes, she said she got a call back from someone in the clinic’s billing department.
“The lady told me, ‘You cannot talk to a doctor or a nurse until you settle your balance,’” Rudder said. “I wasn’t even aware of the bill at the time and would’ve been happy to pay.”
She later went and found the bill in her mail. It was $51 and did not have a payment due date until next month.
Rudder called the billing department back the following week to ask them to clarify why that happened to her. Mississippi Today obtained a recording of the call, during which a billing employee told Rudder that is their procedure.
“According to our procedures, we have to try and take care of the balance before the nurse can call you,” the employee told her in a robotic voice. “The doctors come up with our procedures.”
(Story continues below the photo.)
Jacqueline Rudder’s bill from The Woman’s Clinic. Credit: Mississippi Today
Several other women, some of whom asked not to be identified by name because they are current patients, have had similar experiences at the clinic.
When one attempted to schedule an appointment for a procedure that her doctor told her she needed in December, she was informed she had a $500 balance and couldn’t schedule her appointment until it was paid.
“I asked billing if they would work it out to where I could pay half then and half later, or $100 a month … but they were not willing to work with me,” she said.
Several years ago, another former patient at The Woman’s Clinic was deemed high-risk and put on bed rest early in her pregnancy. She started bleeding one day in January 2019 and called the clinic immediately.
Although she’d notified the clinic of a change in her insurance due to her husband’s new job, she said the first call back she got from the clinic was from billing.
“My OB’s nurse called me hours later, and I came in the next day,” she said.
About five years ago, another former patient found a lump in her breast one morning. She had a family history of breast cancer, including a grandmother who passed away from it.
She called the clinic in a panic.
“I called to make an appointment, and I don’t know who it was, but they said, ‘Hey, you owe a balance, and we can’t see you, and you can’t speak to a doctor or nurse until the balance is paid,’” she remembered. “Another doctor pretty much told me I’d been blackballed from the whole practice until I paid.”
She said she decided at that point to find another doctor.
The Woman’s Clinic is not alone in its practices, according to accounts from women at OB-GYN and other specialty clinics. When Rudder posted her story of what happened at The Woman’s Clinic on a local mom’s page, there were around 100 comments, some of which echoed Rudder’s experience.
A patient at Women’s Health Associates in Flowood told Mississippi Today during her doctor’s visits while pregnant with twins in 2016, she was often directed to the billing office before being able to go back to a room to see her doctor — despite being high-risk.
Shortly after giving birth, she was having extreme pain in her C-section incision and made an appointment to see her doctor.
“Immediately when I got there, they sent me back to that room again, and I was so mad because I was in so much pain,” she recalled. “I felt nobody was listening to me about the pain.”
The bill was less than $100 and was not yet due, she said, but she had to pay it to see her doctor. Her doctor eventually performed a procedure to help relieve the pressure in her incision, she said.
A representative from Women’s Health Associates said she couldn’t comment on the specific instance since she did not know the identity of the patient.
“If a patient has a balance and they need to come in for care … We speak to them about payment arrangements,” said a clinic administrator, who hung up before the reporter got her name. “But if somebody’s in pain, we’re going to take care of them first.”
The Mississippi House unexpectedly took up and passed legislation Thursday that would prevent private companies from forcing their employees to get a COVID-19 vaccination over “sincerely held religious objections.”
The bill, authored by House Speaker Philip Gunn, is a response to a battle currently raging between those opposed to various COVID-19 vaccine mandates issued by President Joe Biden. Some of those mandates have been upheld by the federal courts while others have not.
The bill passed 74-41 with all Democrats except Rep. Tom Miles of Forest voting no.
Besides exempting employees of private businesses from the vaccine mandate, it also would prohibit state and local governmental entities from forcing a vaccine mandate on their employees and would prohibit those entities from withholding services from people who have chosen not to be vaccinated.
The bill also would apply to the National Guard. The U.S. Department of Defense has mandated a vaccine mandate for members of the National Guard. That issue currently is in the federal courts.
There was lengthy, at times terse, debate on the bill and House Public Health Chairman Sam Mims, R-McComb, had to field many questions.
“I don’t see where this bill defines sincerely held religious beliefs,” said Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson. “… Or who has the burden of proof, employees or employer? So we’re opening up all our employers to lawsuits. Our pro-business, Republican-led supermajority is going after our private businesses.”
“Would this apply to the Mississippi National Guard?” Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, asked, to which the answer was yes.
Rep. Thomas Reynolds, D-Charleston, said that George Washington in 1777 ordered Continental troops be vaccinated for smallpox that was raging through the country at the time. “There is a precedent for vaccination in our National Guard,” Reynolds said.
Mims said, “We are giving religious liberty to our public and private employees in Mississippi … It will be up to that employer to verify that employee’s sincerity.”
Rep. Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg, said, “Maybe I missed something. We are still in a pandemic, aren’t we?”
Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, after the vote said: “So, we’ve said that a business doesn’t have to serve someone if they are LGBTQ, doesn’t have to bake them a cake or anything if they don’t want to. But with this we’re telling them they have to serve or employ someone? I guess they just pick and choose who has liberty or rights.”
Hines was referring to a bill passed in 2016 that allowed entities not to provide services based on religious reasons.
It is not clear what the impact of the legislation will be. Most of the vaccine mandates proposed by the president have included religious exceptions or an opportunity for people who choose not to be vaccinated to undergo regular testing for COVID-19. And few if any governmental entities in the state have imposed vaccine mandates.
It also is unclear how many Mississippi companies, such as Ingalls Shipbuilding on the Gulf Coast, would be impacted by the legislation if the president ultimately prevails in the courts on his mandate that companies and entities that receive federal funds require its employees to be vaccinated.
The bill could place Ingalls, which is dependent on federal contracts, in a precarious situation of having to choose to obey state or federal mandates.
Mims said the legislation would not ease the multiple vaccine mandates currently in state law for students both in secondary schools and in colleges and universities.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency sent Jackson a notice of non-compliance over water system deficiencies, the third time in the last two years the agency has done so.
The letter refers to a report the Mississippi State Department of Health sent to the city on Dec. 14, which found that an electrical panel that broke during a fire at the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant last April had still not been repaired.
The malfunction forced pumps at the plant to shut down and reduced water pressure for parts of Jackson, the EPA letter details.
A follow-up MSDH inspection in November found that the pumps were still out of service and the city had no target date for re-installing them. The MSDH report from December requires the city to fix the issue by April 14, 2022.
The EPA letter says the resulting loss of pressure in the distribution system allows for water outside of the pipes to seep in, creating “a suitable environment for bacteriological contamination and other disease-causing organisms, including E.coli.”
In a press release, the EPA added that it would send letters to elected officials advocating that the $79 million provided to Mississippi under the federal infrastructure bill be used on Jackson’s water system.
The EPA’s warning comes two months after Administrator Michael Regan’s visit to Jackson to see the treatment plant in person and speak with concerned residents and officials. That very day, the city had to shutdown the conventional side of O.B. Curtis after using a bad batch of chemicals to treat the water, leading to a boil water notice and low pressure in south and west Jackson.
The agency previously sent letters of non-compliance in April 2021 and May 2020, which listed over a dozen violations of state health code, ranging from staffing issues, equipment monitoring, and treatment technique.
This week, the city is again attempting to restore pressure in south Jackson after a set of water line leaks and a membrane train failure at O.B. Curtis. City workers along with the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition have distributed bottled water to affected residents at the intersection of Raymond and McDowell roads in front of Cash Saver. Impacted residents can find out about water distribution by calling the city at 601-624-0637.
Mississippi Today has been chosen to be part of the Google News Initiative‘s Product Lab, which will help build an organization-wide commitment to product.
“Mississippi Today launched as an online news source in 2016, and over the past five years, we have been committed to delivering the best journalism and digital experience for our readers,” said Mississippi Today CEO Mary Margaret White. “We established a dedicated audience team in 2020, and this group of innovative professionals has kept our newsroom at the forefront of industry trends and changes.”
The audience team is:
Lauchlin Fields, Audience Development Director
Alyssa Bass, Product Engagement Coordinator
Nigel Dent, Audience Journalist
Bethany Atkinson, Community Manager
White and Candi Richardson, Mississippi Today’s sales and marketing director, are also participating in the lab, which has allowed the audience team to develop cross-functional strategies for the organization, all centered on product and audience.
As an organization committed to understanding our audience, Mississippi Today is committed to developing product strategies that address readers’ needs, nurturing our product with an iterative and data-guided approach and establishing an organizational culture of collaboration and communication to make successful products.
“GNI’s Product Lab is giving our audience team the tools we need to build an innovative audience-centered and resilient product culture to help create a more sustainable future for Mississippi Today,” Fields said.
The GNI Product Lab is part of the Google News Initiative Digital Growth Program, which provides free playbooks, interactive exercises, digital workshops and labs to help further achieve digital success. Mississippi Today is one of 14 applicant’s selected for the 14-week program.
“I am proud of the Mississippi Today audience team for earning a place in the Google News Initiative Digital Growth Program’s (Product Lab),” White said. “We are excited to incorporate these learnings into our everyday workflows.”
As cold temperatures repeatedly dipped below freezing this month, several public schools in Jackson switched to virtual instruction because of little or no water pressure on campus.
The district is frequently under a boil water notice, according to Sherwin Johnson, executive director of public engagement for the Jackson Public School District. Sometimes schools do not have water at all because when the temperature drops below freezing, pipes burst which can lead to a reduction in water pressure.
That’s just what happened this week, when approximately 4,000 students were impacted by low or no water pressure at 11 schools across the district.
“We woke up thinking it was going to be a normal routine, brushing teeth and washing faces, and instead it was trickles of water,” said Angela Crudup, whose youngest child attends Lester Elementary, one of the schools without water pressure this week. “So I immediately pulled out all our pots, just the normal routine (when there are water issues), which was a stark reminder of February last year.”
In February 2021, thousands of residents in Jackson went without water for weeks when a winter storm shut down the city’s main water treatment plant. City officials said this week that the plant is still a few years away from having the protection it needs to withstand a similar event.
The O.B. Curtis Water Plant is seen during United States Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan’s tour stop in Ridgeland, Miss., Monday, Nov. 15, 2021. Credit: Eric Shelton/Clarion Ledger
There have also been instances when the water system has failed outside of the winter months due to other issues at the city’s water treatment plant, Johnson said. In November 2021, Wilkins Elementary kept its students home again after losing water pressure during Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan’s visit to Jackson.
Johnson said that school closures are necessary because “when water pressure is low, we cannot flush toilets properly or prepare hot meals. You also cannot wash your hands which is extremely hazardous during this pandemic.”
Crudup works from home, which she says makes school closures inconvenient but manageable. Her two older children were also attending school virtually this week because of COVID exposure, which she said does impact their internet reliability with all three children attending virtually.
“It can be a huge headache,” Crudup said. “My children keep getting kicked out of classes because of the internet so I’m texting teachers all day long, just trying to keep them abreast of what’s going on.”
Johnson said that the district has provided every student with a device, but connectivity does continue to pose a challenge.
“I honestly believe, when it comes to sending the children home, that (the schools) are doing all they can do,” Crudup said. “And the same goes for the COVID exposure situations — nobody wants to get that phone call, but at the end of the day, it’s what’s best.”
“In terms of the city, it’s the complete opposite,” she continued. “I don’t think that everything that could be done is being done…It’s been a year, and we know the problems that lie underneath our streets, and we know this is a problem that could potentially happen every single year. It’s not going to get better until something is done.”
Stephanie Lane has a son is in second grade at Key Elementary, one of the schools impacted by the lack of water pressure. She expressed the same desire to see Jackson’s infrastructure issues addressed.
“Every time we have snow, we have water pressure problems,” she said.
Her son is being kept by his grandmother this week, but she said that’s not always an option when they switch to virtual due to COVID exposure because they don’t want to risk her health.
“With COVID, you never know when you’ll be doing virtual or not,” Lane said. “It’s kind of frustrating going back and forth.”
Lane said her son does okay with the virtual lessons, but that, like many young children, it can be hard for him to maintain his focus spending that many hours a day on the computer. She said he pays attention better and learns better with his teacher there in person.
Johnson said the district is partnering with churches and nonprofits to provide internet access, counseling, meals and water for families in need. He also said they will continue to provide support for educators teaching virtually and after-school enrichment programs to help students master content.
The five state senators who represent the city of Jackson said Thursday they would be working during the 2022 legislative session to increase the law enforcement presence and the number of prosecutors and judges to help fight the “war on crime” in the capital city.
By some metrics, Jackson is the nation’s most dangerous city. Homicide numbers have soared across the country the past two years, but based on cities with at least 100,000 population, Jackson’s per capita murder rate is the highest in the United States.
Sen. Sollie Norwood said “it would take an all hands on deck” approach by the local governments, schools, churches and parents, as well as the state Legislature, to deal with crime in the city.
He said much of the crime is, unfortunately, being committed by young people who should be in school.
Issues surrounding Jackson, the state’s largest city, have been a focus at the Capitol in recent years. Those issues include crime and an aging water and sewer system that often collapses during extreme cold spells and is being investigated by federal officials concerned about poor water quality.
For several years, Republican leadership of the Legislature and Democratic leaders of city government have been unable to agree on how to deal with those issues.
“We are not here to play the blame game,” said Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson. “We are here to say something needs to be done, and we all have roles.”
Horhn and the other senators pointed out that the legislative leadership and Gov. Tate Reeves are in agreement on increasing the number of state law enforcement officers in the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which runs from around the University of Mississippi Medical Center north of the Capitol building to Jackson State University south of the Capitol. Legislative leadership has called on increasing the approximately 75-member force by 50. Reeves, in his state-of-the-state address this week, called for doubling the number of Capitol Police officers.
“We hope this will allow the Jackson Police Department officials to patrol other areas of Jackson,” said Sen. Walter Michel, the only Republican senator representing portions of Jackson.
But Michel pointed out a previous study dating back 20 years said Jackson needed about 600 police officers to be effective in controlling crime. The city now has about 300, he said.
“A war between rival factions — some organized, some random — is being fought on the streets of Jackson right before our eyes,” Horhn said. “Citizens are afraid to leave their homes. Citizens are afraid to stay in their home. They are afraid their loved ones may fall victim to some foolishness. Visitors from other communities are afraid to come to Jackson for fear of catching a stray bullet … This situation is out of control. We are all going to have to come together to do something about it.”
He said both the state and local officials need a plan to deal with the crime issue.
Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, said that Mississippi was one of three states to lose population based on the 2020 Census, and as long as the state did not have “a vibrant” urban area it would be difficult to reverse that trend.
“This state cannot succeed and this state cannot grow unless Jackson is successful,” Blount said. “For people who live outside the city, you have a choice: help the city grow and get better or wash your hands of it and watch our state not grow … If we give up on Jackson, we give up on our state, and we are not going to do that.”
Highlighting the difficulty in getting everyone on the same page in dealing with issues facing Jackson, when asked to comment on the senators’ news conference, an official with the city government said: “We were not made aware of that or invited to it.”
In addition to the extra police officers, the senators said Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens has requested two more permanent assistant district attorneys and eight temporary assistant district attorneys to deal with a backlog of people charged with crimes. The senators said they are still waiting on clarification on how many additional temporary judges are needed. Hinds County already has two special judges working out of a state office building to deal with the backlog, Horhn said.
“We are trying our best to get the DA the tools he needs,” said Sen. Hillman Frazier, D-Jackson.
The senators also hope to garner about $600,000 in state funds to help with needed repairs at jails in Hinds County and Jackson.
Blount also expressed optimism that state funds would be available to help with water and sewer issues facing the city. The state has $1.8 billion in federal funds that are designated for such projects.
When lawmakers arrived at the Capitol on Thursday, they found purses on their desks, each containing a cookie with “56c” on it — to represent the 56 cents on the dollar Black women in Mississippi receive compared to white men for the same work.
“Equal pay matters to women’s pocketbooks,” said Cassandra Welchlin, director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, flanked by more than a dozen women at the Capitol. The group put the purses on all 174 lawmakers’ desks. They also contained the group’s call to fix what it says are glaring flaws in pending equal pay legislation.
In Mississippi, the last state in the nation to not provide state legal recourse for employees paid less for the same work based on sex, several equal pay bills are pending in the Legislature this year.
The House last week overwhelmingly passed House Bill 770 passed on to the Senate, where two measures, Senate Bill 2451 and Senate Bill 2452, are also pending. The bills would create a state “actionable right” for any employee paid less for equal work based on sex. Federal law already provides such a right, but taking an employer to task in federal court is a more difficult and often more costly task for aggrieved employees.
The Black Women’s Roundtable says HB 770, authored by Rep. Angela Cockerham, “is the opposite of an equal pay bill.” They said it “rubber stamps” an employer decision to pay women less by allowing them to use salary history as as basis for pay. It also would apply only to full time workers, and to employers with more than five employees.
It also lacks any specific protection for women of color and requires a woman to waive federal rights to a claim if they bring a state claim. During passage of the bill in the House, Cockerham said women would have to choose whether to bring a state or federal claim and would “only get one bite at the apple.”
Senate Bill 2451, authored by Republican Sens. Brice Wiggins and Nicole Akins Boyd, contains “glaring flaws,” the Black Women’s Roundtable leaders said. It requires “pleading with particularity” — a high burden of proof for employees, it would provide less damages than available under federal law and includes no retaliation protection, among other problems, they said.
Wiggins recently said the bill he co-authored is “a conservative approach.”
“(That means) the state will no longer be last on this issue, but it will not infringe on the rights of businesses,” Wiggins said. “… Part of the debate has been that people don’t want the state injecting itself into private business, and this minimizes that, while allowing a cause of action (for employees) on a state level.”
BWR called for lawmakers to amend the two bills at the forefront with the Legislature, or to instead support SB2452, authored by Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, which BWR said “has strong and inclusive language that should be supported.”
Recent studies show women make up 51.5% of the population in Mississippi and nearly half of its workforce. They are the primary breadwinners for a majority — 53.5% — of families in this state, which is the highest rate in the nation.
But women working full time in Mississippi earn 27% less than men, far greater than the 19% gap nationwide. That gap grows worse for Black and Latina women in Mississippi, who are paid just 56 cents and 54 cents, respectively, for every dollar paid to white men.
Women make up nearly 60% of those in Mississippi’s workforce living below the poverty line. The state has continually ranked worst or near-worst in most every ranking for working women.
BWR members on Thursday said that closing the pay gap in Mississippi would reduce by half the number of women in poverty and by one-third the number of children in poverty.
At a press conference at the Capitol on Thursday, Maria Serratos, a Mississippi State University student majoring in engineering, joined the call for equal pay.
“Why should I stay in a state that devalues me by offering 54 cents for the same work a man makes $1?” Serratos said. “If women in this state are not offered a fair shot at success, this state will not grow.”
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