Baseball is over (except for Atlanta Braves fans still celebrating), but high school football playoffs, college football’s crunch time, the yo-yo New Orleans Saints all have our attention. What’s more, the college basketball regular season tips off in the Magnolia State this week. There’s something for everyone, including ESPN GameDay coming to Oxford, Jackson State at 8-1 and Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss all facing Top 20 foes.
BILOXI — Gov. Tate Reeves told reporters during a Tuesday press conference he has no immediate plans to call lawmakers to Jackson for a special session.
That means Mississippi is no closer to having a medical marijuana program or funding an incentive program that keeps nurses and health care workers from leaving their hospitals jobs at alarming rates.
Without a special session, lawmakers won’t meet until the regular session begins on Jan. 4. Nurses and hospital leaders have told Mississippi Today for the last two months they cannot wait that long.
Hospitals are anticipating the nursing and health care worker shortage to grow worse this winter, leaving hospitals statewide to close hundreds of more beds that should be open to patients. In a letter sent to Reeves on Nov. 5, chief nursing officers at 36 hospitals across Mississippi begged the governor to step in.
“Chief Nursing Officers are predicting that staff shortages will result in closing over 500 acute care hospital beds over the upcoming months,” the nurses wrote in the letter. “The shortage is driven by losses in the nursing workforce which are attributable to burnout, fatigue and, to a growing extent, nurses who took travel nursing positions and made significantly higher wages and now desire to take time off.”
When Mississippi Today broke the story about the nurses’ letter on Friday, Reeves’ office had not responded to submitted questions about the nursing crisis. The governor had previously said publicly that he would consider an incentive program and was in discussion with legislators about a special session.
But on Tuesday, Reeves was in Biloxi at the Gulf Coast Coliseum to announce how the state would spend $62 million in federal funds related to 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill on south Mississippi projects.
At the event, a reporter asked Reeves specifically if he had any short-term plans to address the immediate needs of hospitals and nursing staff. He did not address the question directly, instead giving a five-minute answer that spoke only to the state’s ongoing, long-term workforce development plans.
Legislative leaders, however, already have a bill they wrote weeks ago that would create a funding program to assist the state’s struggling hospitals. Their proposed program would allow hospitals to give their most in-demand workers a $5,000 bonus for agreeing to stay at their job for at least five more months.
They sent that bill, along with a promised agreement between the House and Senate, to the governor on Sept. 30. But the could-be program funding cannot be allocated this year unless Reeves calls a special session to allow lawmakers to officially pass it.
Hospitals leaders have repeatedly said throughout the pandemic their inability to compete with salaries from out-of-state hospitals and temporary staffing is the main reason they are hemorrhaging health care workers.
“We have a labor shortage in virtually every industry in Mississippi right now,” Reeves said in response to Mississippi Today’s question. “The reason we have a labor shortage in Mississippi is because we have a labor shortage in virtually every industry in America because of the far-left policies of the Biden administration.”
Reeves — after explaining how high school graduation rates have improved under his administration — pointed out the state has a shortage of respiratory therapists, doctors and “every health care sector,” emphasizing it’s a problem every state is facing.
“We’ve got to continue to encourage more and more Mississippians to go into the field of health care and we will continue to do so,” Reeves said. “It is certainly an issue, and one that we are aware of, and continuing to look at ways to address it.”
In a recent interview with Mississippi Today, a Singing River nurse said 12 people left her nursing staff in just one week. From March 2020 to mid September, the hospital system — which has three hospitals on the Gulf Coast — lost 289 nurses, or more than a third of its overall nursing staff.
Singing River’s leadership has been vocal about the shortage. Hospital CEO Lee Bond is pushing lawmakers to make an even broader incentive program that gives nurses $20,000 bonuses spread over two years.
Meanwhile, legislative leaders continue to await word from the governor about a potential special session regarding medical marijuana. Legislative leaders worked all summer to draft a bill after the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down a medical marijuana initiative that was overwhelmingly approved by Mississippi voters in 2020.
Reeves, over the summer, regularly said he was open to calling a special session for medical marijuana and even the nursing crisis stopgap. But since lawmakers finalized bills for both programs, the governor has remained silent about whether he will call a special session at all.
Rep. Robert Johnson, the Democratic House leader, last week joined a growing chorus of lawmakers who say passing a medical marijuana program during a special session would free them up to focus more on pressing issues when they go back into regular session in January.
“With everything we need to do with this state, that we’re going to spend even a day on something that has been talked about so much bothers me,” Johnson said on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast. “It continues to be a moving target, and we’re going to end up spending most of our session debating medical marijuana when we have so many other issues to focus on.”
Mississippi tax revenue collections through October, the first four months of the fiscal year, are about $160 million above the amount collected during the same period last year, according to the most recently released revenue report.
Through October, the state has collected $2.2 billion, which is 7.75% above the amount collected from various taxes during the same period in 2020.
The October revenue report released by the Legislative Budget Committee staff continues a trend of soaring revenue collections that began in the summer of 2020 as federal COVID-19 relief funds poured into the state. For the month of October, the state collected $584 million in revenue — up $47.3 million from the amount collected in October 2020.
The soaring revenue collections come as legislative leaders and Gov. Tate Reeves work to finalize budget proposals for consideration when the Legislature meets in full session in January to begin the task of developing a budget to fund state programs, such as education, health care and law enforcement, for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.
The 14 members of the Legislative Budget Committee, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Philip Gunn, are slated to meet Wednesday to agree on a revenue estimate with Reeves for the coming fiscal year.
That estimate will signify the early projection of revenue expected to be collected during the upcoming fiscal year to fund the state budget.
In developing that budget, the committee and the governor are likely to consider multiple factors, including:
The state’s economic outlook, which impacts revenue collections.
The current revenue collections.
The fact that the state collected $924.5 million or 15.9% more in revenue during the past fiscal year, which ended June 30, than it did in the previous year, meaning the state treasury is flush with funds.
According to the October revenue report, just about all categories of state revenue collections are up for the year. The largest single source of revenue, the sales tax on retail items, is up $165.4 million or 26%, while the use tax, imposed on internet and other out-of-state sales, increased $10.3 million or 7.7%. The second largest source of revenue — the tax on personal income — increased only $6.6 million or less than 1%, while the corporate income tax decreased $32.8 million or 17.2%.
Another category that saw a decline in revenue collections is the tax on cigarettes, alcohol and beer, which dropped $5.1 million or 5.3%.
The decline is not surprising since liquor sales soared last year early in the pandemic as the governor shut down much of the state. Most other sources of revenue increased.
After the revenue estimate is adopted Wednesday, the governor is slated to release his budget proposal before Nov. 15, according to state law. It is possible that the governor will include in his proposal recommendations on how the state should spend $1.8 billion in federal American Rescue Plan funds that are supposed to be used to combat COVID-19, but in reality the state has considerable discretion on how the funds are spent.
The budget committee is slated to release it proposal in early December.
Both the governor and legislative leaders have indicated their hopes of providing a teacher pay raise during the upcoming session. In addition, the governor has proposed phasing out the state’s income tax, which accounts for about one-third of revenue collections. Gunn has proposed phasing out the income tax, but also raising other taxes, such as the tax on retail items, to offset the loss revenue.
In 2018, Georgia lawmakers voted to create the state’s first financial aid program specifically for working-class students. A year later, a higher education board in Utah redistributed millions of dollars in financial aid to prioritize students who couldn’t afford college on their own. Virginia’s governor followed earlier this year with a proposal to use American Rescue Plan funds to increase aid for low-income students.
Across the country, a trend is taking shape: States are increasingly looking to shift financial aid dollars to working-class students, mainly in an effort to boost the number of people in the workforce with college degrees.
Not Mississippi.
Last month, a little-known state education board proposed a drastic overhaul of financial aid in Mississippi. Under the Post-Secondary Board’s proposal, the state’s three main existing financial aid programs would be consolidated into a single award called the “Mississippi One Grant.”
If the policy is adopted by the Legislature in 2022, white students would see their financial aid awards increase, while Black and low-income students’ awards would decrease by hundreds, in some cases thousands, of dollars, putting Mississippi at odds with how other states are seeking to distribute financial aid.
As state lawmakers consider whether to take up the proposal this legislative session, Mississippi Today talked with national experts about how this program compares to those in other states.
Historically, states have used financial aid as a tool to help students afford college. This goes back to the 1970s when Congress created the LEAP Program, which provided a matching incentive for states to create need-based financial aid programs.
Two decades later, a shift occurred. In 1993, using funds from the state lottery, Georgia developed the HOPE Scholarship, which awards aid solely on the basis of merit. Fourteen states, primarily those in the South, followed by creating similar programs. By 2008, state spending on merit-based programs had ballooned by 230% over the prior 10 years, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP). In comparison, spending on need-based programs increased by 105%.
The growth in merit-aid programs can be partly explained by their popularity, said Tom Harnisch, the vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
“Merit-based aid programs are very popular with policymakers because they help out students from middle and upper-middle income and even wealthy families, and those people vote,” he said.
That movement is starting to lose steam. Harnisch said that states seem to be moving back to need-based aid programs and away from the kind of model the Post-Secondary Board has proposed Mississippi adopt.
“There’s a growing sense of, while all state financial aid is important, how do you get the best bang for your buck?” Harnisch said. “And that is through investing in students based on their financial need.”
Most states now offer undergraduate grant programs that factor in a student’s income, according to NASSGAP. And the states that don’t are considering revamping their programs. Higher ed boards in Louisiana and Missouri are facing calls to redistribute financial aid to working-class students who need help paying for college.
There are several reasons for the trend back toward need-based aid. One significant driver, said Frank Ballmann, the director of federal relations at NASSGAP, is a new focus on the state-level at increasing the number of college graduates in the workforce.
“That’s really where states tend to focus more on need-based aid because you could have say, a rich kid — that student is going to get a degree regardless of if you give aid or not,” Ballmann said. “Only question is if you’re gonna keep them in the state.”
Research is mixed on whether merit-aid policies are an efficient way for states to meet their workforce goals. Merit-aid is often touted as one way to stop brain drain, but it’s unclear if this is the case in Mississippi: A study from Mississippi State University research center NSPARC commissioned in 2018 found that the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant did not increase in-state enrollment of high-achieving students.
“The causality can get pretty muddled pretty quickly when you think about it,” said Sarah Pingle, the vice chair of the Education Commission of the States. “Did the presence of this merit aid program cause someone in the higher-income bracket to want to achieve in high school and go right to college and be successful?”
Merit aid also tends to do little to help working-class students attend or graduate from college. This is because states typically use ACT or SAT scores to evaluate merit, and these tests tend to favor white, wealthier students.
“Test scores reflect a bunch of things, but there is a very strong relationship between ACT and SAT scores and every possible measure of socioeconomic status: family income, parental education, the money available to their local school district,” said Bob Schaeffer, the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. “When you use test scores to award state tuition aid, you end up giving the majority of the money, the lion’s share of the money, to kids who’ve had the most opportunities in life.”
Need-based aid, on the other hand, is seen as an effective tool for states wanting to produce more college graduates, another reason for the new trend. In Mississippi, NSPARC found that about 75% of students who received HELP as a degree-seeking freshmen graduated in six years, compared to about 67% of students who were eligible for HELP but did not receive it.
Georgia created its first need-base grant in 2018 partly in an effort to increase the number of college graduates in the state, though it has yet to fully fund the program. Utah redesigned its financial aid programs specifically to be more fair in how it doles out help for college. The student who led Utah’s redesign task force told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2019 that the new program was “an attempt to be more equitable.”
As Mississippi’s legislators consider the One Grant, Harnisch said he hopes they focus on Mississippi’s own workforce development goals: The state has set a goal to have 55% of its workforce complete college by 2030.States across the country have modeled the best policies for tackling this gap, he said — and it’s not the one Mississippi is considering.
“The key thing for states like Mississippi is to invest in need-based aid programs,” Harnisch said. “Those programs help the students who are on the margins, who may or may not go to college. That’s the dial that can be most easily moved, and those are the students who often will stay in the state.”
Mississippi Today managing editor Kayleigh Skinner will join 30 newsroom leaders for the Poynter Institute’s seventh annual Leadership Academy for Women in Media.
The program, hosted online, is designed for women and nonbinary journalists who directly manage people to learn to manage teams more effectively, develop and communicate their strategic vision, and steer their organizations toward greater success.
“We are thrilled to welcome our final cohort of women leaders this year,” said Doris Truong, director of training and diversity at Poynter. “Every cohort inspires because we see the members’ ongoing commitment and passion for journalism. These are also leaders who are dedicated to self-improvement that will have a ripple effect with their staff as they work toward more diverse and inclusive news products.”
Those chosen for Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Women in Media passed through multiple rounds of review with an emphasis to ensure diversity across race, ethnicity, geography, age, platform/medium, organization size and expertise. Reviewers included Poynter staff and faculty, as well as a volunteer committee of program graduates.
Skinner joined the Mississippi Today staff in January 2017 as an education reporter and has advanced to a senior staff member in her four years with the organization. She served as deputy managing editor before assuming the role of managing editor in July 2020. She works alongside editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau to manage the newsroom’s daily and enterprise reporting and craft broader editorial strategy. She is a member of Mississippi Today’s management team, where she plays a key role in organizational development and long-term vision for newsroom growth.
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st-century public discourse.
After months of negotiations, Congress passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package in early November, sending about $4.46 billion to Mississippi over the next five years.
The infrastructure deal garnered bipartisan support, even among the Mississippi delegation. Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson voted to pass the bill, while Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Republican Reps. Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Steven Palazzo voted against it.
The White House released a preliminary breakdown of where that money will flow to Mississippi. These estimates are based on allocation of funds in previous bills, meaning the formulas for the current bill could change based certain factors like the state's population changes and energy consumption.
It is still unclear which state or local entities will get to spend this money. Much of the federal money will be given to the state through grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation, but how states spend these pots of money can differ based on the specific money.
Mississippi Today is comprehensively tracking the historic amount of federal funding coming to the state, and we will diligently update this coverage to clearly show which officials and governmental entities will be responsible for its spending. Click here to read that coverage, and check back for regular updates.
Below is a breakdown of what Mississippi will receive based on the White House estimates.
Roads and bridges: $3.3 billion
Mississippi will receive about $3.3 billion for federal-aid highway apportioned programs and $225 million for bridge replacement and repairs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act over five years. This money can be spent, among other things, on replacement and repairs for both federal and state highways in Mississippi.
Mississippi can also compete for the $12.5 billion Bridge Investment Program for economically significant bridges and nearly $16 billion of national funding in the bill dedicated for major projects.
Water lines and pipes: $429 million
Mississippi will receive about $429 million over five years to improve water infrastructure across the state. This money is expected to be divvied up by state lawmakers to municipalities and counties across Mississippi.
Public transportation: $223 million
Mississippi will receive about $223 million over five years under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to improve public transportation options across the state.
High-speed internet: $100 million
Mississippi will receive a minimum allocation of $100 million to help provide broadband coverage across the state, including providing access to the at least 531,000 Mississippians who currently lack it.
About 1,181,000 Mississippians, or 41% of residents in the state, will be eligible for the Affordability Connectivity Benefit, which will help low-income families afford internet access. This is a subsidy program that provides eligible households with a monthly broadband service discount of $50 — or $75 on tribal lands — and reimbursement for connected devices of up to $100 per household.
Airports: $99 million
This pot of money is for maintenance and upgrades at existing airports. "The United States built modern aviation, but our airports lag far behind our competitors," the White House said.
Some leaders in other states have suggested spending this money on gate and terminal repairs. The White House, in its breakdown, said the funds could "address repair and maintenance backlogs, reduce congestion and emissions near ports and airports, and drive electrification and other low-carbon technologies."
Electric vehicle chargers: $51 million
Mississippi would expect to receive $51 million over five years to support the expansion of an electric vehicle charging network in the state. As federal leaders and the automobile industry move toward fully-electric fleets, this infrastructure is a critical need in Mississippi.
Mississippi will also have the opportunity to apply for the $2.5 billion in grant funding dedicated to electric vehicle charging in the bill.
Protection against climate change, cyberattacks: $35 million
Mississippi will receive about $19 million over five years to protect against wildfires, and about $16 million to protect against cyberattacks.
Mississippians will also benefit from the bill’s $3.5 billion national investment in weatherization, which stands to reduce energy costs for families.
Gov. Tate Reeves proudly claimed victory on social media in the opening round of the legal fight to block President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate on private companies.
“The fight continues but this is a big first step,” Reeves said this week on social media after the courts temporarily halted the mandate.
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction on Nov. 6 on the mandate that companies employing more than 100 either require their workers to be vaccinated or subject to weekly testing for COVID-19. The three-judge panel cited “cause to believe there are grave constitutional and statutory issues” with the mandate.
The temporary stay means little since the vaccine mandate is not scheduled to go into effect until early January. A mask requirement that is part of the mandate and also was halted goes into effect in December.
The lawsuit, which included various states and private companies, is one of multiple lawsuits being filed to challenge the Biden mandate. Mississippi’s participation is notable in that the state leads the nation in number of COVID-19 deaths per capita and has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates.
When Reeves first began bemoaning vaccine mandates, he said, “I don’t believe public sector entities have the authority to mandate vaccines. I don’t think private sector entities should mandate vaccines, but if an individual doesn’t like what their boss is doing, I guess they can go find another job.”
When it was pointed out that there are multiple vaccine mandates imposed by the state of Mississippi — like the vaccinations necessary to attend public schools — the governor eventually backtracked to say he does not believe one person, including the president, can unilaterally issue mandates.
And even last week, Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn was proclaiming the government could not issue vaccine mandates.
“I believe strongly the government should not force any Mississippian to take the vaccine against his or her will,” Gunn wrote to members of the House.
The speaker and governor, of course, are parts of the government — and important parts at that. Gunn, as the speaker of the House, and Reeves, first as lieutenant governor and later as governor, have had the power to influence whether Mississippi had vaccine mandates or eliminate them as many anti-vaccination advocates lobby them to do every legislative session. Thus far Gunn, Reeves and other state leaders have rejected the pleas of the anti-vaccination advocates. Whether that will change in the upcoming 2022 session remains to be seen.
In reality, the lawsuits against the Biden vaccine mandate have nothing to do with whether the government can issue vaccine mandates. Government has been, with the blessing of the courts, doing so for decades. What is at issue in the lawsuits against Biden is whether his Department of Labor can use federal law to impose the mandate. Federal law gives the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration the authority to issue rules and regulations to ensure workplace safety. The question for the courts is whether the vaccine mandate is a proper use of that OSHA authority.
The case could likely go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who Reeves said is working closely with him on the litigation, is already asking the Supreme Court to strike previous rulings that ensured abortion rights. Oral arguments in that case will be held in December.
Last year, Fitch joined a national lawsuit to have millions of votes thrown out in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case was summarily rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In that case, Fitch and other Republican attorneys general who filed the lawsuit famously claimed that Biden “had less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power” chance of winning the election in four key swing states.
“One in a quadrillion to the fourth power” equates to “less than one million million million million billion billion billions chance,” according to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Leaders of Mississippi’s largest and capital city say they need at least $1 billion to replace Jackson’s failing water system, which left thousands of residents without water for weeks in March following a historic winter weather event.
The city’s leaders acknowledge they cannot afford the repairs themselves and have begged state and federal leaders for help.
Before the passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package in Congress last week, Democratic President Joe Biden promised to address aging and dangerous water systems across the country.
“Never again can we allow what happened in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi,” Biden said before the bill was passed by both the Senate and the House.
But the bill does not seem likely to save Jackson’s water system: It includes just $459 million for water improvements across Mississippi — less than half of what the city needs. And that money will likely be spent across the state and will be divvied up by state leaders, who for generations have divested from Jackson and continue to seem unwilling to offer much help.
“We have to make certain that (Jackson not getting its fair share of the federal infrastructure funding) does not happen,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told the Post.
Mississippi Today has extensively covered the Jackson water crisis, explaining why a tense relationship between Jackson City Hall and the state Capitol is keeping Jacksonians fearful of the short and long term future of the water system.
