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Attorney General Lynn Fitch wants campaign finance reform and more enforcement — wait, what?

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Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s reluctance to investigate or prosecute campaign finance violations last year prompted other state leaders to call for reform and more enforcement.

Now Fitch is calling for — wait for it — campaign finance reform and more enforcement. This appears to be at least in part political damage control, trying to get out front in an area where she’s drawn slings and arrows.

Fitch, whose own campaign is largely funded by out-of-state special interests, in a brief media tour with conservative media outlets said she wants to put a halt to “out of state influencers” with deep pockets meddling in Mississippi elections.

But oddly, in announcing this crusade, Fitch offered an open call to out-of-state influencers to dump unlimited amounts of money into Mississippi elections.

Fitch, in her press release announcing her call for reform, said — contrary to more than 30 years of legal interpretation and practice — there is no limit to the amount of money out-of-state corporations can donate to a Mississippi candidate. She even put it in italics, for emphasis on her attempted nullification of one of the few stringent campaign donation rules Mississippi has.

This goes against at least 30 years of legal interpretation and practice. Mississippi candidates and campaigns, bless their hearts, have operated under the assumption that out-of-state corporations face the same $1,000 a year donation limit as in-state corporations.

In its written campaign finance guide for Mississippi candidates, the secretary of state’s office for decades has advised candidates: “Corporations, incorporated companies, and incorporated associations are prohibited from contributing more than $1,000 per calendar year, directly or indirectly, to a political party, candidate for office or political committee.” The current 2024 guide for candidates includes this same language that does not make a distinction between out-of-state and in-state corporations.

Fitch’s office did not answer questions about her new interpretation that such limits don’t apply to out-of-state corporations. It would appear that only months ago — on Aug. 4, 2023 — Fitch herself appeared to believe that limit applied. She announced, after months of inaction on major campaign finance complaints, that her office was investigating whether a PAC run by lieutenant governor candidate Chris McDaniel’s campaign treasurer tried “exceeding corporate contribution limits” by shuffling out-of-state money through PACs.

But now, Fitch contends out-of-state corporations do not face the state’s $1,000 limit law. This is likely based on the wording of that law, which says, “It shall be unlawful for any corporation … organized under the laws of this state” to exceed $1,000 a year in donations to a candidate. But that law also says this applies to any corporation “doing business in this state.” This language, similar to corporate law and rules elsewhere in Mississippi regulations and those of other states, has been generously interpreted. Doing business in this state can mean many things, including making a donation to a candidate, and hence out-of-state corporations have been at least in practice limited to $1,000 a year.

READ MORE: Chris McDaniel, Lynn Fitch and the case of the missing $15,000

It would appear Fitch — the only statewide official with clear authority to investigate and prosecute campaign finance violations — is going through some legal contortions in an effort to avoid having to do so. Many political observers believe this is because she has higher political ambition, perhaps for the governor’s office, and doesn’t want to draw ire from the more conservative wing of the GOP by clamping down on campaign finances.

In a radio interview last week, Fitch said, “We’re allowing out-of-state influencers to determine and to pick who the candidates should be in our state … (and) We’ve got to have enforcement.” She said there were instances last election that were “clearly unethical and clearly immoral … but they weren’t criminal under our laws.” She said she wants lawmakers to fix that. Others have said Fitch’s office has campaign enforcement power that she refuses to exercise.

Fitch’s call for reform and limiting out-of-state money in Mississippi rings a little hollow. A majority of Fitch’s own campaign money, according to her 2023 finance reports, came from out-of-state businesses: about $727,000 of $1.27 million.

Fitch also appears to get lots of money from out-of-state interests to whom her office awards contracts. Records show that Fitch signed at least nine AG office contracts last year with out-of-state law firms (law firms and other forms of limited liability companies do not face a $1,000 limit) that had donated more than $300,000 to her campaign.

Secretary of State Michael Watson declined comment on Fitch’s call for reform and statement that the $1,000 limit doesn’t apply to out-of-state corporations. Watson has called for major reforms and last summer appeared to take a dig at Fitch when he said he wasn’t seeking more power for his office.

“But when people do not do their jobs,” he said, “I will stand in the gap for Mississippians.”

READ MORE: Chris McDaniel, Lynn Fitch show that Mississippi might as well not have campaign finance laws

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who filed several campaign finance complaints with the AG’s office against his primary opponent McDaniel last year, has also called for reform and more enforcement. On primary election night when his victory was evident, Hosemann said campaign finance reform would be a top Senate priority this session.

Calls for Mississippi campaign finance reform are fairly common, particularly during statewide election years. But actual reform is rare. In 2017, after a more than year-long investigative series by the Clarion Ledger, lawmakers did pass law ending the practice of Mississippi politicians spending campaign donations for personal expenses — a practice dubbed “legalized bribery.”

But otherwise, Mississippi’s weak campaign finance laws for decades have only been tweaked and changed piecemeal. The laws are now a confusing, often conflicting, patchwork. For instance, the new law on spending for personal expenses conflicts with some existing law that was left intact.

And enforcement has been nearly nonexistent.

It’s unclear whether sweeping reform such as that being proposed by Watson will be addressed this legislative session. Generally lawmakers are loath to police their own campaigns or give more enforcement power to any other office holder. Some have said the appointed Ethics Commission should be given more authority and enforcement power, as many other states have non-elected entities policing campaign finances.

Fitch’s Democratic challenger in last year’s election, attorney Greta Kemp Martin, campaigned unsuccessfully on reform and enforcement of campaign finance laws.

“It’s amusing to see Attorney General Fitch’s newfound interest in election laws,” Martin said last week, “especially considering there was no apparent concern leading up to Election Day. Enhance penalties, reform and clarity are needed in Mississippi campaign finance for sure. But AG Fitch has not shown that enforcement of even the minimal laws currently in place has even been a priority for her office … Further, this sudden interest has me curious as to whether AG Fitch has taken a look at her own financial reports, especially when it involves out-of-state donations.”

Fitch did not provide great detail on her “reform package” in her press release or subsequent interviews. Her office did not answer questions on what specific bills might be forthcoming or which lawmakers would be filing them.

But Fitch did say she wants more transparency and truthfulness in campaign finance reporting, suggesting “adding a penalty of perjury to all campaign finance reports, which can carry up to 10 years in prison.” She also called for improving the civil penalties for violations and “giving the secretary of state authority to do his job” of making public campaign finance reports easy to read and search.

Despite most everyone else already thinking it’s the law for decades, Fitch wants to prohibit “all corporate contributions over $1,000 — not just those made by Mississippi corporations, which is current law.” (Those italics are by her.)

In her press release, Fitch said: “We have devised a package of reforms that will tighten the laws to keep outside special interests from meddling in our elections, to give Mississippi voters the tools to know who is trying to influence their vote, and to hold bad actors accountable.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Pharmacy benefit manager reform likely dead

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mississippitoday.org – Gwen Dilworth – 2025-04-01 17:26:00

Hotly contested legislation that aimed to increase the transparency and regulation of pharmacy benefit managers appeared dead in the water Tuesday after a lawmaker challenged the bill for a rule violation.

The bill was sent back to conference after Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, raised a point of order challenging the addition of code sections to the bill, which will likely kill it. 

House members in the past have chosen to turn a blind eye to the rule, which would require the added code sections to be removed when the bill is returned to conference. This fatal flaw will make it difficult to revive the legislation. 

“It will almost certainly die,” said House Speaker Jason White, who authored the legislation. “And you can celebrate that with your pharmacist when you see them.”

“…This wasn’t ‘gotcha.’ Everybody in this chamber knew that code sections were added, because the attempt was to make 1123 more suitable to all the parties.”

The bill sought to protect patients and independent pharmacists, who have warned that if legislators do not pass a law this year to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry, some pharmacies may be forced to close. They say that the companies’ low payments and unfair business practices have left them struggling to break even.

The bill underwent several revisions in the House and Senate before reaching its most recent form, which independent pharmacists say has watered the bill down and will not offer them adequate protection. 

House Bill 1123, authored by White, originally focused on the transparency of pharmacy benefit managers. The Senate then beefed up the bill by adding provisions barring the companies from steering patients to affiliate pharmacies and prohibiting spread pricing – the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits. 

House Speaker Jason White brings the House of Representatives to order at the beginning of the new legislative session at the State Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025 in Jackson.

Independent pharmacists, who have flocked to the Capitol to advocate for reform this session, widely supported the Senate’s version of the bill. 

The Senate incorporated several recommendations from the House into its bill, saying that they believed that the legislation would have the House’s support. 

Instead, the House sent the bill to conference and requested additional changes, including new language that would eliminate self-funded insurance plans, or health plans in which employers assume the financial risk of covering employees’ health care costs themselves, from a section of the bill that prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from steering patients to specific pharmacies.

This language seeks to satisfy employers, who argue that regulating pharmacy benefit managers’ business practices will lead to higher health insurance costs. 

Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, who has spearheaded pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts in the Senate, previously said that adding the language to the bill would “remove any protection out of the law.” But she signed the conference report that included the language Monday after a heated conference meeting between lawmakers. 

Rep. Hank Zuber, R-Ocean Springs and co-author of the bill, said the bill has something for everybody, gesturing to its concessions for employers and independent pharmacists. He said the bill gives independent pharmacists 85% of what they wanted. 

Mississippi Independent Pharmacies Association director Robert Dozier was not available for comment by the time the story published. 

Zuber told House members Tuesday to “blame the Senate” for the slow progress of pharmacy benefit manager reform in Mississippi, citing the body’s failure to take up a drug pricing transparency bill half a decade ago, for three years in a row.

“If the Senate had followed the leadership and the legislation that we drafted those many years ago, we would not be here,” Zuber said. “We would have the information on drug pricing, we would have the information and transparency on (pharmacy benefit managers) and we would have the ultimate reason as to why drug costs continue to rise.”

Members of the House expressed dissatisfaction with the legislation Tuesday, arguing it did not do enough to ensure lower prescription drug costs for consumers. 

“I’m going to try to do something next year that goes even further,” Zuber responded.

For the past several years, lawmakers have proposed bills to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, but none have made it as far as this session. 

“We’ll go another year,” said White. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Feuding GOP lawmakers prepare to leave Jackson without a budget, let governor force them back

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-01 19:23:00

After months of bitter Republican political infighting, the Legislature appears likely to end its session Wednesday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown if they don’t come back and adopt one by June 30. 

After the House adjourned Tuesday night, Speaker Jason White said he had presented the Senate with a final offer to extend the session, which would give the two chambers more time to negotiate a budget. As for now, the 100 or so bills that make up the state budget are dead.

The Senate leadership was expected to meet and consider the offer Tuesday evening, White said. But numerous senators both Republican and Democrat said they would oppose such a parliamentary resolution, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has also said it’s unlikely and that the governor will have to force lawmakers back into special session.

White said he believes, if the Senate would agree to extend the session and restart negotiations, lawmakers could pass a budget and end the 2025 session by Sunday, only a few days later than planned.

But if the Senate chooses not to pass a resolution extending the session, White said the House would end the session on Wednesday.

It would take a two-thirds vote of support in both chambers to suspend the rules and extend the session. The Senate opposition appears to be enough to prevent that. 

Still, the speaker said he believes Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders are considering the proposal. But he said if he doesn’t hear a positive response by Wednesday, the House will adjourn and wait for Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special session at a later date. 

“We are open to (extending the session), but we will not stay here until Sunday waiting around to see if they might do it,” White said.  

White said leaving the Capitol without a budget and punting the issue to a special session might not cool tensions between the chambers, as some lawmakers hope. 

“I think when you leave here and you end up in a special session, some folks say, ‘Well everybody that’s upset will cool down by then.’ They may, or it may get worse. It may shine a different and specific light on some of the things in this budget and the differences in the House and Senate,” White said. “Whereas, I think everybody now is in the legislative mode, and we might get there.”

The Mississippi Constitution does not grant the governor much power, but if Gov. Tate Reeves calls lawmakers into a special session, he gets to set the specific legislative agenda — not lawmakers. 

White said the governor could potentially use his executive authority to direct lawmakers to take up other bills, such as those related to education, before getting to the budget. 

“When we leave here without a budget, it is entirely the governor’s prerogative to when he (sets a special session) and how he does that.”

While the future of the state’s budget hangs in the balance, lawmakers have spent the remaining days of their regular session trying to pass the few remaining bills that remained alive on their calendars. 

House approves DEI ban, Senate could follow suit on Wednesday 

The House on Tuesday passed a proposal to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs from public schools, and both chambers approved a measure to establish a form of early voting. 

The House approved a conference report compromise to ban DEI programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from K-12 schools, community colleges and universities. If the Senate follows suit, Mississippi would join a number of other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump, who has made rooting DEI out of the federal government one of his top priorities. 

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers follows hours of heated debate in which Democrats, all almost of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. Legislative Republicans argued the legislation will elevate merit in education and remove from school settings “divisive concepts” that exacerbate divisions among different identity groups. 

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the act, but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law, but only after they go through an internal campus review process that would give schools time to make changes. The legislation could also withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. 

Legislature sends ‘early voting lite’ bill to governor 

The Legislature also overwhelmingly passed a proposal to establish a watered down version of early voting, though the legislation is titled “in-person excused voting,” and not early voting.

The proposal establishes 22 days of in-person voting before Election Day that requires voters to go to the circuit clerk’s office or another location county officials have designated as a secure early voting facility, such as a courtroom or a board of supervisors meeting room. 

To cast an early vote, someone must present a valid form of photo ID and list one of about 15 legal excuses to vote before Election Day. The excuses, however, are broad and would, in theory, allow many people to cast early ballots. 

Examples of valid excuses are voters expecting to work on Election Day, being at least 65 years old, being currently enrolled in college or potentially travelling outside of their county on Election Day. 

Since most eligible voters either work, go to college or are older than 65 years of age, these excuses would apply to almost everyone. 

“Even though this isn’t early voting as we saw originally, it makes this more convenient for hard working Mississippians to go by their clerks’ office and vote in person after showing an ID 22 days prior to an election,” Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England said. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves opposes early voting, so it’s unclear if he would sign the measure into law or veto it. 

Both chambers are expected to gavel at 10 a.m. on Wednesday to debate the final items on their agenda. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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‘A lot of us are confused’: Lacking info, some Jacksonians go to wrong polling place

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mississippitoday.org – @mintamolly – 2025-04-01 18:43:00

Johnny Byrd knew that when his south Jackson neighborhood Carriage Hills changed wards during redistricting last year, his neighbors would have trouble finding their correct polling place on Election Day.

So he bought a poster board and inscribed it with their new voting location – Christ Tabernacle Church.

“I made a sign and placed it in front of the entrance to our neighborhood that told them exactly where to go so there would be no confusion,” said Byrd, vice president of the Association of South Jackson Neighborhoods.

Still, on April 1, a car full of voters from a senior living facility who should have gone to Christ Tabernacle were driven to their old polling place. 

“I thought it was unfortunate they had to get there and find out rather than knowing in advance that their polling location was different,” said Sen. Sollie Norwood, a Democrat from Jackson who was on the ground Tuesday helping constituents with voting.

One of those elderly women became frustrated and said she no longer wanted to vote, Norwood said, though her companions tried to convince her otherwise. By midday Tuesday, 300 people had voted at Christ Tabernacle, one of the city’s largest precincts currently in terms of registered voters, but among the lowest in turnout historically.

Voting rights advocates and candidates vying for municipal office in Jackson are keeping an eye on issues facing voters at the polls, though without official results, it remains to be seen if that will dampen turnout this election with the hotly contested Democratic primary.

“I still believed it was gonna be low,” Monica McInnis, a program manager for the nonprofit OneVoice, said of turnout. “I was expecting it would be a little higher because of what is on the ballot and how many people are running in all of the wards as well as the mayor’s race.”

A daughter helps her mother casts her votes as mayoral candidate John Horhn chats with voter at Christ Tabernacle Church in south Jackson, Tuesday, April 1, 2025.

The situation is evolving as the day goes on, but the main issues are twofold. One, thousands of Jackson voters have new precinct locations after redistricting last year put them into a new city council ward. 

Two, some voters didn’t realize their polling place for the municipal elections may differ from where they voted in last year’s national elections, which are run by the counties. 

In Mississippi, voters are assigned two precincts that are often but not always the same: A municipal location for city elections and a county location for senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections 

“People in Mississippi, we go to the same polling location for three years, and that fourth year, it changes,” said Jada Barnes, an organizer with the Jackson-based nonprofit MS Votes. “A lot of us are confused. When people are going to the polling place today, they’re seeing it is closed, so they’re just going back home which is making turnout go even lower.” 

Barnes said she’s hearing this primarily from a few Jackson voters who called a hotline that MS Votes is manning. Lack of awareness around polling locations is a big deterrent, she said, because most people are trying to squeeze their vote in between work, school or family responsibilities. 

“Maybe you’re on your lunch break, you only got 30 minutes to go vote, you learn that your polling location has changed and now you have to go back to work,” she said. 

Norwood said he heard from a group of students assigned to vote at Christ Tabernacle who had attempted to vote at the wrong precinct and were told their names weren’t on the rolls. They didn’t know they had been moved from Ward 4 to Ward 6, Norwood said, meaning they expected to vote in a different council race until reaching the polls Tuesday.

Though voters have a duty to be informed of their polling location, Barnes said city and circuit clerks and local election commissioners are ultimately responsible for making sure voters know where to go on Election Day. 

Angela Harris, the Jackson municipal clerk, said her office worked to inform voters by mailing out thousands of letters to Jacksonians whose precincts changed, including the roughly 6,000 whose wards changed during the 2024 redistricting. 

“I am over-swamped,” she said yesterday. 

Despite her efforts, at least one voter said he never got a letter. Stephen Brown learned through Facebook, not an official notice, that he was moved from Ward 1 to Ward 2. 

Stephen Brown, a resident of Briarwood Heights in northeast Jackson, ran into difficulty voting April 1.

A resident of the Briarwood Heights neighborhood in northeast Jackson, Brown’s efforts to vote Tuesday have been complicated by mixed messages and a lack of communication. He has yet to vote, even though he showed up at the polls at 7:10 this morning. 

His odyssey took him to two wrong locations, where the poll managers instructed Brown to call his ward’s election commissioner, who did not answer multiple calls, Brown said. Brown finally learned through a Facebook comment that he could look up his new precinct on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website — if he scrolled down the page past his county precinct information.

This afternoon, Brown has a series of meetings planned, so now he’s hoping for a 30-minute window to try voting one more time, even though he’s skeptical it will make a difference. 

“I’m a very disenchanted voter, because I’ve been let down so much,” he said. “I vote because it’s the thing that I’m supposed to do and because of the sacrifices of my ancestors, but not because I truly believe in it, you know?” 

Brown’s not alone in facing turbulence. Back at Christ Tabernacle, one Jackson voter, who declined to give her name, said she’s frustrated from having to drive to three polling locations in one day.

“I’m dissatisfied with the fact that I had to drive from one end of this street and all of the back to come over here when I usually vote over here on Highway 18,” she said. “This was a great inconvenience, gas wise and time wise.”

The same thing happened to Rodney Miller. He called the confusion some voters are facing in this election “unnecessary.” 

“That ain’t the way we should be handling business,” he said. “We should be looking out for one another better than that, you know? It’s already enough getting people out to vote, and when you confuse them when they try? Come on now. That’s discouraging.”

Christ Tabernacle is the second largest precinct in the city in terms of registered voters, with 3,330 assigned to vote there as of 2024, according to documents retrieved from the municipal election committee. But it had one of the lowest voter turnout rates – 10% in the 2021 primary election before redistricting and before it became so large.

Byrd mentioned the much higher turnout in places like Ward 1 in northeast Jackson, compared to where he lives in south Jackson. Why does Byrd think this is?

“Civics,” Byrd said. “They took civics out of school. If you ask the average person what is the role and responsibility of any elected official, they can’t tell you.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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