Good Sunday evening everyone! Tonight we will remain mostly clear, with a low around 71.
Hurricane Marco will approach the central Gulf Coast tomorrow, then move westward along the coast and away from our area through Wednesday. A few afternoon storms are possible in North Mississippi tomorrow as Marco’s rain bands move through. Otherwise, expect mostly sunny skies with a high near 90. East wind 5 to 10 mph.
Monday night, mostly cloudy skies and a low around 72. We will keep a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the forecast overnight and into Tuesday morning.
Good Saturday morning everyone! It is currently comfortable out the door with temperatures in the upper 60s this morning. We will see mostly sunny skies today, with a high near 87. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph. We have a 50% chance of showers and thunderstorms due to a stationary front to the south of our area with low pressure along it. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. All of North Mississippi is in a Dense Fog Advisory until 10 am, so use caution in your morning commutes!
TONIGHT: A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the early to late evening. Otherwise, partly cloudy skies, with a low around 69.
SUNDAY: A mix of sun and clouds, with a high near 91. South southeast wind around 5 mph.
SUNDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy, with a low around 71.
The federal government allotted Mississippi $18 million through the Emergency Solutions Grant COVID-19 to prevent homelessness during the pandemic. In Mississippi, the program is called the Rental Assistance for Mississippians Program (RAMP).
In an earlier relief package, the federal government offered states almost $3 billion in rental assistance grants to cover the gaps for people who found themselves unable to afford rent due to the pandemic. Mississippi initially received $8 million — which it began administering through three housing programs in northern, central and southern regions of the state in late June — and then another $10 million.
But it will take at least $100 million to meet the enormous need across the state, researchers estimate.
Mississippi’s unemployment rate jumped 2% from June to July as more people began seeking work in the fourth month of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Extended unemployment benefits — which offered an additional $600-a-week on top of Mississippi’s $235 weekly max — ended on July 31 while Congress remained in gridlock over a new relief package.
The state’s unemployment rate, which had hovered around 5.5% before the pandemic, was 10.8% in July, just above the nation’s rate of 10.1%, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Gov. Tate Reeves announced Thursday the state would apply for a $300 weekly boost offered by President Donald Trump’s recent executive order. The state must match the federal money by $100, but Reeves said it would use the existing state payments to recipients for this match, meaning Mississippi’s lowest-income earners receiving state benefits under $100 will not receive the supplement. This could apply to part-time workers who earned $866-a-month or less — $8.66-an-hour on 25-hour work weeks — before the pandemic.
Reeves said Thursday he estimated the state would start issuing payments within one to three weeks, but a release by the Mississippi Department of Employment Security said the state must wait for federal approval and then it will take three to four weeks before funds are available.
In April, almost every state, including Mississippi, recorded their single highest unemployment rate dating back to 1976, the earliest year in the publication. In Mississippi, the figure was 16.3%.
When the pandemic hit in March, Mississippi’s unemployed population rose to almost 200,000 Mississippians, or about one-sixth of the labor force, within a month. But an additional nearly 70,000, about 5% of the worker population, also left the labor force altogether in that time.
As people started returning to work in Mississippi in May and June, the percentage of jobless workers started to shrink, but as others who had fallen out of the labor force started looking for work again in July, the jobless rate ticked up.
About 133,000 people in Mississippi were still unemployed in July, almost 30,000 more than in June, but about 38,000 people also reentered the workforce in that time, according to the national monthly household survey.
Mississippi was one of 14 states whose jobless rates increased from June to July, based on preliminary figures.
Nearly 200,000 people were seeking unemployment benefits in Mississippi by early August, according to the most recent data published by the U.S. Department of Labor. To qualify typically, an jobless person must be willing and able to return to work and be searching for a job. Reeves initially waived the state’s work search requirement, but that expired in early August, which means people will have to prove they are looking for work to continue receiving benefits.
Employers that have since reopened and called employees back to work may notify the state unemployment office if a worker is electing not to return and the state will end their benefits.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Gov. Tate Reeves speaks to media about his shelter-in-place order for Lauderdale County, as Executive Director of MEMA Col. Gregory S. Michel listens during a press conference at the State of Mississippi Woolfolk Building in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, March 31, 2020.
The Mississippi Legislature is scheduled to convene at 4 p.m.Monday to try to pass a budget for the Department of Marine Resources, which has been in limbo from a fight between the Legislature and Gov. Tate Reeves over spending authority.
Passing the agency’s budget has taken on new urgency, as it would reportedly face problems making payroll by the end of the month, and as two potential hurricanes bear down on the Gulf Coast.
DMR, which provides regulatory and marine law enforcement services on the Gulf Coast, has been without a state budget since July 1 .
Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann are calling the Legislature back into session.
At issue is oversight of Gulf restoration funds Mississippi receives for oil and gas leases. The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, or GOMESA, is a federal revenue sharing program for oil and gas producing states in the Gulf. For this year, the state has about $46 million in GOMESA funds.
Legislative sources on Friday said a deal has been made for lawmakers to leave about $26 million allocated for projects already approved or started. Of the remaining money for this year, $10 million would be left for the governor to approve the projects, as has been done since the program’s inception. For the remaining $10 million, projects would be submitted to the Legislature for its approval.
The deal would apply only to this year’s DMR budget and GOMESA funds. Moving forward, lawmakers would continue to haggle over what control the governor or Legislature has over the projects and spending.
Legislative sources said there is some urgency in resolving the issue and passing a DMR budget. The agency will reportedly have trouble meeting payroll by the end of the month, and there are two potential hurricanes bearing down on the Gulf, which could potentially make landfall early to mid next week. DMR would need budget and spending flexibility to handle emergency work in marine waters before and after a storm.
Since its inception in 2006, then-Mississippi Govs. Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant controlled approval of GOMESA projects vetted by DMR as the revenue started out small but continued to grow.
In recent years, lawmakers and others have questioned whether projects chosen are helping coastal restoration and protection, or if they are just pet political projects.
Millions in GOMESA funds have been granted to build boardwalks near casinos, a planned aquarium in Gulfport — including a tram system threatened to be “de-obligated” for not meeting GOMESA requirements — and other projects critics have said don’t meet the intended purpose.
This year, House lawmakers wanted to include legislative oversight of GOMESA spending in DMR’s budget, saying the Legislature, not the governor, controls state purse strings. Gov, Tate Reeves has called the move a “power grab” and said he should continue to control the money as his predecessors did. Coast lawmakers have been divided over the issue.
The Senate, over which Reeves presided for eight years as lieutenant governor, has balked at stripping the GOMESA spending authority from the governor.
Lawmakers set the rest of a $6 billion state budget and left town July 1 still at an impasse over the DMR budget. They had plans to return within a week and haggle out DMR’s budget, but a COVID-19 outbreak at the Capitol infected 49 legislators and had the Capitol shut down for weeks.
Lawmakers reconvened earlier in August, in large part to override Reeves’ veto of most of the public education budget. Lawmakers successfully squashed his veto, the first time since 2002 the Legislature has overridden a governor’s veto. But lawmakers remained at an impasse over the DMR budget and GOMESA spending.
Normally the Legislature would not be able to convene itself this late in the year and would be dependent on the governor to call a special session. Earlier this year, though, the Legislature approved a resolution allowing them to reconvene to deal with COVID-19 issues. The Legislature presumably could convene for the pandemic, and then take up non-coronavirus related issues.
University of North Carolina students wait outside of Woolen Gym on the Chapel Hill, N.C., campus as they wait to enter for a fitness class Monday, Aug. 17, 2020. The University announced minutes before that all classes will be moved online starting Wednesday, Aug. 19 due to COVID clusters on campus. (Julia Wall/The News & Observer via AP)
Two Mississippi universities reported COVID-19 outbreaks this week as tens of thousands of students return to campuses across the state.
Faculties are publicly urging administrators to reconsider face-to-face instruction plans.
Colleges around the country have been forced to halt their in-person reopenings, and the talk of American higher ed this week is how to keep students safe during the worsening pandemic.
But on Thursday, the 12-member board of trustees of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning — the governing body of the state’s eight public universities — held a 26-minute meeting that ended without a single mention of the coronavirus.
The IHL board’s monthly meetings are an opportunity to communicate with the public about issues facing the higher education community. Board members on Thursday, participating in a conference call meeting, however, did not discuss the most topical issue.
An IHL spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment after the meeting.
All of Mississippi’s public universities opened on Aug. 17 except for the University of Mississippi, which is scheduled to open Aug. 24.
This week, the board’s regular meeting happened the day after the state’s top health official announced that the Mississippi Department of Health was investigating two outbreaks at Mississippi universities.
“We’re extremely concerned about colleges,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during a Wednesday press conference. “We’ve seen, certainly across the country, a lot of situations where people have actually had to close college right after they opened it. Certainly, that’s not something that we would want to see (in Mississippi).”
One of the confirmed outbreaks is at the University of Mississippi, and one is at the Mississippi University for Women. Dobbs did not disclose the number of confirmed cases for these outbreaks, but he said the MUW outbreak occurred after students visited the Cotton District in Starkville, home to the much larger Mississippi State University.
“Not a big surprise, right? We know when people socialize and get in groups, concentrated, not wearing masks they’re absolutely going to spread the coronavirus,” Dobbs said.
The University of Notre Dame shut down all in-person classes eight days after classes started and moved fully online for at least two weeks because of COVID-19 outbreaks. Similarly, the University of North Carolina stopped all in-person classes within a week of starting the fall semester.
As of Aug. 20, the number of confirmed Coronavirus cases on UM’s campus had risen to 161 total with 28 new cases this week.
The week before, UM faculty pressed Chancellor Glenn Boyce at a town hall meeting about why the university planned to reopen when area infection rates have significantly worsened. Boyce alluded to a system-wide decision, but faculty otherwise could not get a clear answer.
In the weeks leading up to the start of school, faculty of at least two Mississippi universities sent open letters imploring their administrations to rethink their reopening plans.
Delta State University’s letter asked that all but “essential classes” be moved online.
“The situation worsens by the day and to ignore the likelihood of a coming health catastrophe on our campus is a position morally untenable to us,” the letter reads.
Mississippi State University’s letter, signed by more than 300, proposed the same and called to conscience what returning to school would mean for the university’s most vulnerable staff members.
“Janitorial and custodial workers face the greatest risk from a large population returning to campus, and they will not be receiving hazard pay … Those facing the greatest risks of exposure through an increase of student contact have had little say in the decision-making process, have less job security, more limited benefits, and are not being compensated for their heightened vulnerability.”
Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
University of Mississippi fans cheer during the Ole Miss-Alabama game on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018.
No tailgating and other social gatherings will be allowed before or after college football games, and stadiums will be limited to 25% capacity under an executive order Gov. Tate Reeves announced Thursday.
Reeves acknowledged the ban on tailgating during the COVID-19 pandemic will be unpopular. In Mississippi, tailgating is often considered more popular than the game itself.
But on Thursday, Reeves touted the fact that Mississippi is scheduled to have football. Some conferences, such as the Pac-12 and Big Ten, have cancelled their fall seasons.
“This is an effort, which we worked closely with the universities on, to set the floor,” he said in a statement. “…This the minimum that each school is required to do this fall to keep players and spectators safe while allowing college football to occur.”
While some athletic conferences have opted not to compete this fall, the Southeastern Conference, of which both the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State are members, plan to start their football season on Sept. 26.
The University of Southern Mississippi is slated to kick off its football season hosting South Alabama on Sept. 3. The Southwestern Athletic Conference, of which Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley are members, plan to play a spring football slate.
Reeves announced the executive order Thursday during his near-daily coronavirus update.
“I have made clear to the universities that they have to work hard to make sure these guidelines are strictly enforced,” Reeves said.
The guidelines mandate six feet separation in seating for people who are not part of the same family. It also mandates hand sanitizer being provided at the stadium and the opening of all entry gates and restrooms to limit crowding. A mask mandate will also be in effect when spectators are not seated.
The current executive order limiting crowd size to 10 people indoors and 20 people outdoors will govern stadium luxury boxes, Reeves said.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Gov. Tate Reeves speaks to media during a press conference on Tuesday, March 31, 2020.
Mississippians unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to soon receive an extra $300 a week in federal unemployment aid from a Trump administration order, but the payments probably won’t last for long, Gov. Tate Reeves said Thursday.
“If you get an offer to go back to your old job, or to get a new job, please do so,” Reeves said on Thursday. “We don’t know when this will run out, but there is a set amount of money … and it’s highly likely the money will run out soon.”
If the state is approved for the program, those eligible — people unemployed by the pandemic and receiving at least $100 a week currently in state unemployment — would receive payments of $300 more a week, back-dated to Aug. 1. Reeves estimated it would take the state 1-3 weeks before it can begin sending payments to people.
Reeves announced that Mississippi is joining 19 other states that had applied for the unemployment money as of Thursday. Eleven have been approved and only one, Arizona, has begun paying the benefit. States are being approved initially for three weeks worth of payments to unemployed people. Trump’s order says the program will run through December, but experts this week said the money allocated is likely to run out long before that.
In a move that had politicians on both sides of the aisle questioning whether Trump was overstepping his constitutional authority, he announced earlier this month an executive order that would provide unemployed people with up to $400 a week in additional unemployment benefits. This comes after Congress’ $600-a-week in federal unemployment assistance ended in July and lawmakers remain in a partisan deadlock over a new relief package. Trump’s order uses $44 billion in FEMA funds for natural disaster relief to supplement state unemployment.
Trump’s order requires a state “match.” It allows states to either add $100 a week in unemployment benefits, bringing people’s total to $400, or to count unemployment benefits they are already paying out toward the $100 match.
Mississippi is choosing the latter, meaning qualified unemployed people will receive $300 a week, not $400.
Reeves said the state could not afford to provide an additional $100 a week in unemployment, which would have cost the state about $20 million to $22 million a week, roughly what the state is already spending on unemployment insurance benefits.
“We don’t have an extra $22 million a week for 8-10 weeks laying around in this state to provide an additional $100,” Reeves said.
In Mississippi, state benefits are a maximum $235 a week, with the average payment at less than $200, compared to the national average of $308 a week.
Nearly 200,000 Mississippians are seeking unemployment, according to the most recent data released Thursday, and the state’s unemployment rate was at 8.7 percent as of June.
Reeves has praised Trump for “trying to step up and help struggling workers” and criticized Congress for its inability to pass a pandemic relief plan.
Reeves said the presidential order comes under the federal Stafford Act governing emergency spending, and that by proxy his administration can apply for and implement the program without state legislative action.
