Mississippi Today
Mike Chaney is not the first state politico to call for his elected post to be eliminated
Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney is not Mississippi’s first statewide official to advocate for his job to be changed from an elected post to an appointed one.
Earlier this month, Chaney called on the Legislature to eliminate the elected insurance commissioner position and instead have the state‘s insurance industry regulated presumably by an appointee of the governor who is confirmed by the Senate. Chaney said he is willing to serve for a short period of time in an appointed position.
William Winter successfully proposed to the Legislature in the 1960s that his post as tax collector be eliminated and the duties incorporated into other positions. Winter’s actions did not end his political career. He went on to serve in multiple other statewide elected post, including as governor from 1980 until 1984 and is viewed as one of Mississippi’s most significant political figures.
In the 1970s, John Ed Ainsworth ran for and was elected to the post of land commissioner with the promise he would work to eliminate the position. One of his primary goals while eliminating the position was to ensure 16th Section land was properly managed to the benefit of public schools. He succeeded and for his troubles was defeated when he later tried to run for lieutenant governor, though he is viewed favorably by many for his work in various areas of state government, including in developing the state’s casino industry. The duties that the land commissioner had are now handled primarily by the secretary of state.
At least four previous statewide elected posts in Mississippi are either now appointed or have been eliminated. Besides the posts of land commissioner and tax collector being eliminated, the post of Supreme Court clerk was changed in 1976 so that the nine members of the Supreme Court appoint the clerk instead of the clerk being elected by Mississippians. And in the 1980s, the elected state superintendent of education was made appointed. The superintendent is now nominated by the Mississippi Board of Education and confirmed by the Senate.
While the state superintendent of education and Supreme Court clerk are in the constitution and required an amendment approved by the voters to be changed, the land commissioner and tax collector needed only action by the Legislature to be eliminated.
Currently, the statewide posts of governor, lieutenant governor, auditor, attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer are all in the constitution, so it would take a vote of the people to change how they are selected or to eliminate any of them. The positions of insurance commissioner and commissioner of agriculture and commerce would require only action of the Legislature and the governor’s signature to make a change.
When Chaney first ran for and was elected as insurance commissioner in 2007, he said the post should be appointed. Since then, Chaney has been reelected four times. He does not plan to run in 2027 and is saying now is the time to change how the insurance commissioner is selected.
Chaney said recently he believes an appointee โcan do a better job regulating the industry and protecting the consumersโ than someone elected to the post.
โI have grave concerns about someone running for this as a stepping stone to another position,โ said Chaney, age 80. โIt is too important to do that.โ
He said it โis borderline unethicalโ to take campaign funds from the industry being regulated.
Chaney said in 39 states the person regulating the insurance industry is appointed instead of elected.
Mississippi has eight statewide posts โ more than most states, but there are states with more. For instance, neighboring Alabama has 10, but that includes three public service commissioners, all of whom are elected statewide. Mississippi also has three public service commissioners, but they are elected regionally.
Another neighbor โ Tennessee โ only elects its governor statewide. The lieutenant governor is elected by the members of the Senate.
Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who is elected statewide, recently said on Mississippi’s Today โThe Other Sideโ podcast that the Senate would look at state government structure in the coming session, including whether Mississippi should elect so many positions.
While some posts have been changed from elected to appointed, Mississippi legislators often have been reluctant to take the vote away from the people.
In the early 2000s, the House led by then-Ways and Means Chair Billy McCoy passed legislation to make the Transportation Commission appointed instead of elected. The proposal did not survive the process.
But in more recent times, legislators did vote to make all local school superintendents appointees of the local boards of education.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1927
Sept. 22, 1927
St. Louis native Josephine Baker became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture. She played the lead role of Papitou in the French silent film, โSiren of the Tropics,โ who, like Baker, found her true calling as a performer.
The film’s success led to other starring roles, an autobiography, the creation of a doll in her likeness and even a toothpaste commercial.
At age 11, Baker had witnessed racial violence in East St. Louis, โwatching the glow of the burning of Negro homes lighting the sky. We children stood huddled together in bewilderment โฆ frightened to death with the screams of the Negro families running across this bridge with nothing but what they had on their backs as their worldly belongings.โ
After working in some choruses on Broadway, she traveled to Paris, where she became the most successful American entertainer working in France. Picasso drew paintings of her, author Ernest Hemingway spent hours talking to her in Paris bars. During World War II, she aided the French Resistance by socializing with the Germans while secretly gathering information that she transmitted to England, sometimes writing the information in invisible ink on her sheet music.
After the war, she received the Croix de Guerre, the medal of the Lรฉgion d’honneur and other medals. When she returned to the U.S., she refused to appear before segregated audiences, despite being offered up to $10,000 ($110,000 in today‘s money) to perform. She fought to prevent Willie McGee’s execution in Mississippi, and in 1951, the NAACP honored her with a โJosephine Baker Dayโ and a parade of 100,000 in Harlem.
In 1963, she became the only official female speaker at the March on Washington. She adopted a dozen children in her lifetime from countries around the globe. She called her children the โRainbow Tribe.โ She played Carnegie Hall in 1973, the Royal Variety Performance in 1974 and a revue celebrating her 50 years in show business in 1975.
After rave reviews, she died unexpectedly after experiencing a cerebral hemorrhage. More than 20,000 attended her funeral, where she received full French military honors.
Diana Ross portrayed Baker in her Tony-winning Broadway show, an HBO movie told her life (for which Lynn Whitfield became the first Black actress to win an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special), and she was depicted in the TV series, โLovecraft Country.โ
In 2021, Baker was inducted into the Panthรฉon in Paris โ the first Black woman to receive this honor.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1955
Sept. 21, 1955
Moses Wright took the witness stand and identified the men who kidnapped and killed his great-nephew, Emmett Till.
โIt was the first time in my life I had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime, let alone something terrible as killing a boy,โ Wright said later. โI just wanted to see justice done.โ
He worked as a sharecropper and was also a minister, whom the locals called โPreacher.โ The two white men who abducted Till โ J.W. Milam and his half-brother, Roy Bryant โ threatened to kill Wright if he said anything.
โHow old are you, Preacher?โ Milam asked. Wright replied 64. โIf you make any trouble, you’ll never live to be 65,โ Milam said. When the teen’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River, Wright identified Till. Despite threats, Wright still took the witness stand. When the prosecutor asked him to point out Till’s abductors, he stood up, pointed his weathered finger at Milam and said, โThere he is. That’s the man.โ
He testified that Bryant identified himself as โMr. Bryant.โ It may have been the first murder trial in Mississippi where a Black man testified against a white man. Even after the trial, the threats continued, and Wright left to join his family in Chicago, where he had already sent them.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi River mayors agree to unify ports from the Corn Belt to the coastย
BATON ROUGE, La. โ Mayors from 10 states along the Mississippi River convened in Louisiana’s capital this week to announce a cooperative agreement between the working river’s ports.
In town for the annual Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative meeting, the mayors also called upon the next U.S. president to prioritize several federal policy changes to support the 105 cities represented by the initiative.
On Wednesday, mayors from the Midwestern Corn Belt joined mayors from Louisiana to sign the Mississippi River Ports Cooperative Endeavor Agreement. The agreement is the first to ensure cooperation between the inland ports in the heart of the corn belt and the coastal ports of Louisiana that export 60% of the nation’s agricultural products.
Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mayor George Flaggs praised the move in a statement on Friday, adding that he and the other mayors there were paying particular attention to environmental issues along the river such as the ongoing drought.
“This agreement ensures that ports from St. Louis to St. Paul will receive federal designation, a significant step that will bolster commerce and strengthen the economic impact of the entire Mississippi River region,” Flaggs said.
The inland ports between St. Louis and St. Paul were not federally recognized until 2022, said Robert Sinkler, executive coordinating director of the Corn Belt Ports. With the support of the Mississippi River cities initiative, the Corn Belt Ports initiative launched in 2019 to advocate for federal recognition of those ports.
Now, the corn belt and coastal ports will take on commerce-related policy actions together, for the first time in Mississippi River history, said Sinkler. The river moves nearly one trillion dollars in product through its ports annually, according to MRCTI. Maintaining the navigation capability on the river is a key part of the agreement.
Drought disrupts commerce and drinking water along the Mississippi River corridor
For the third year in a row, the Midwest is under extreme drought conditions, which have led to low water levels that threaten to disrupt barge transports carrying fuel and grain. The 16-month drought spanning from 2022 to 2023 cost the nation $26 billion. The drought of 2012 cost the Mississippi River corridor $35 billion.
Belinda Constant, mayor of Gretna, Louisiana, said that droughts often cost more than floods, but do not qualify as โmajor disastersโ worthy of relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
โWe still are not able to capture federal disaster declarations for drought or intense heat,โ Constant said.
While drought is not considered a โmajor disasterโ by FEMA, the president can declare one. President Joe Biden declared a federal emergency last September in Louisiana when the effects of drought caused salt water to intrude up the Mississippi River and threaten drinking water.
FEMA is not set up to provide relief for intense droughts or extreme heat, which are expected to become more extreme, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The federal government does offer support through other agencies, such as farm losses through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Constant asked the next U.S. president to update FEMA regulations to include droughts and extreme heat. Earlier this summer, dozens of labor and environmental groups filed a petition to push FEMA to declare extreme heat and wildfire smoke as โmajor disasters,โ on par with other natural disasters such as floods and tornadoes.
Constant said the next administration should also create a mechanism to incentivize or compensate manufacturers and farmers who recycle water or reduce water usage during dry periods.
Louisiana is again dealing with drought. As of Sept. 13, 2024, the saltwater wedge had reached river mile 45, corroding drinking water infrastructure below Port Sulphur and inching toward Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana. Earlier this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on an underwater sill near Myrtle Grove to help slow the creep of saltwater intrusion for the third summer in a row.
But the drought impacts all communities along the Mississippi River, not just those in southern Louisiana. And 50 cities with a total population of 20 million people depend on the Mississippi River for their drinking water.
โMemphis depends on the health of the corridor to power our international port and fuel our multi-billion-dollar outdoor recreation and tourism industry,โ said Paul Young, mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. The tournament fishing industry is worth billions in revenue.
โIt is vital we work to safeguard the Mississippi River together,โ he added.
Advocating for the Mississippi River corridor as a whole
The 105 cities represented by inititiuave also called on the next U.S. president to advocate for the corridor both at home and internationally. โWe are asking the next president to please work with us to enact a federal Mississippi River program through which we can deploy infrastructure spending at a multi-state scale,โ said Hollies J. Winston, mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
On the global stage, the initiative has advocated for the Mississippi River corridor at five United Nations climate meetings. Bob Gallagher, mayor of Bettendorf, Iowa, called on the next President to ensure that the nation remains a part of the Paris Agreement to sustain the corridor’s $500 billion in revenue.
โServing as a past co-chair of MRCTI along with being from an agricultural state, I know firsthand that U.S. participation in the Paris Accord helps us compete and move our commodities and goods across the world to other markets,โ said Gallagher.
Pulling out of the Paris Agreement could trigger tariffs for goods coming from a non-signatory nation. Leaving the international climate accord would place farmers and manufacturers at a potential disadvantage in the global market, said Gallagher.
In 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. In 2021, on President Biden’s first day in office, the U.S. rejoined the international agreement to limit temperature increases.
โWe can’t afford to make any policy decisions that will jeopardize the $164 billion in agricultural commodities the Mississippi River makes possible every year,โ said Gallagher.
Mitch Reynolds, mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the initiative’s co-chair, said that the advocacy work of the initiative is paramount to defending the health of the river and its communities.
The Mississippi River Ports Cooperative Endeavor Agreement unites the communities along the corridor in a shared commitment to protect, restore and manage the river’s resources sustainably, said Sharon Weston Broome, mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and host of the initiative’s 13th annual meeting.
โWe urge the next administration to increase its focus on the river, its impact on the national economy and its continued need for stewardship,โ said Broome.
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. MRCTI is also a Walton grantee.
Mississippi Today environmental reporter Alex Rozier contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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