Mississippi Today
Brandon Presley condemns Gov. Tate Reeves for not providing more oversight of welfare agency
Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor, hammered Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday for not doing enough to prevent the state‘s massive welfare scandal while Reeves served eight years as lieutenant governor.ย
Speaking in front of the state Department of Human Services building in downtown Jackson, Presley told reporters that Reeves could have used the lieutenant governor’s role as state Senate president to push lawmakers to conduct more robust hearings over state agencies, including MDHS, which was at the center of the scandal.
โBecause it’s politically convenient for him, Tate Reeves now wants to deflect blame on his own failure to protect millions of dollars that were under his so-called watch as lieutenant governor,โ Presley said. โHe will say or do anything to get elected.โ
Reeves’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but the governor has repeatedly said that he had no role in the roughly $77 million previous state agency leaders squandered and that the misspending occurred before he was elected governor.ย
READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves airs ad responding to Brandon Presley welfare scandal attack
But Presley said the very fact that the misspending occurred before Reeves entered the Governor’s Mansion deserves an explanation on why elected officials within the state Capitol never discovered the impropriety.
โWhen he first ran for lieutenant governor, Tate Reeves said a watchdog is exactly what they’re about to get,โ Presley said. โThe truth of the matter is, in 12 years of Tate Reeves’ reign in state government, he’s been a lapdog for his buddies, special interests and his campaign contributors.โ
State and federal prosecutors have not charged the first-term governor with a crime. But as lieutenant governor between 2012-2020, Reeves served a pivotal leadership role in the Legislature โ including during the years of 2017-2020, when the bulk of the known welfare misspending happened.
Legislative committee leaders have broad power to conduct oversight of state agencies and compel state agency leaders to testify about their organizations.
To date, no legislative committee has held a hearing to scrutinize the actions of the state welfare agency, though some Democratic lawmakers have organized their own hearings.ย
Though Reeves was never a member of the legislative committee created by state law to provide oversight of the Department of Human Services, he has often boasted about his direct control of the state budget during his time at the Capitol. Reeves served as chair or vice chair of the powerful Legislative Budget Committee that does provide oversight of agency budgets.
Presley has seized on the state’s welfare scandal and used it as a focal point of his gubernatorial campaign. He previously said he would call lawmakers into a special legislative session to reform state ethics laws to prevent a similar scandal from occurring in the future.
READ MORE: New Brandon Presley ad claims Tate Reeves helped โrich friends’ in welfare scandal
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1750
Nov. 4, 1750
Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the โFather of Chicago,โ was born.
A man of African descent, he became the first known settler in the area that became the city of Chicago. He married a Potawatomi woman, Kitiwaha (Catherine), and they had two children.
According to records, the property included a log cabin with two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy, a smokehouse, a fenced garden and an orchard. At his trading post, DuSable served Native Americans, British and French explorers and spoke a number of languages.
โHe was actually arrested by the British for being thought of as an American Patriot sympathizer,โ Julius Jones, curator at the Chicago History Museum told WLS, but DuSable beat those charges.
In Chicago today, a school, street, museum, harbor, park and bridge bear his name. The place where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River is now a National Historic Landmark, part of the city’s Pioneer Court.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Mississippiโs top election official discusses Tuesdayโs election
Secretary of State Michael Watson talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance ahead of Tuesday’s election. He urges voters to remember sacrifices many have made to protect Americans’ voting rights and get to the polls, and he weighs in on whether a recent court ruling on absentee vote counting will impact this year’s elections.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Insurance chief willing to sue feds if Gov. Reeves doesnโt support state health exchangeย
State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney is willing to sue the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if it does not allow Mississippi to create a state-based health insurance exchange because of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential opposition.
Federal officials, who must approve of a state implementing its own health insurance exchange, want a letter of approval from a state’s governor before they allow a state to implement the program, according to Chaney.
โI don’t know what the governor’s going to do,โ Chaney told Mississippi Today. โI think he’ll probably wait until after the election to make a decision. But I’m willing to sue CMS if that’s what it takes.โ
The five-term commissioner, a Republican, said his requests to Reeves, also a Republican, to discuss the policy have gone unanswered. The governor’s office did not respond to a request to comment on this story.
Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law authorizing Chaney’s agency to create a Mississippi-based exchange to replace the federal exchange that currently is used by Mississippians to obtain health insurance. The bill became law without the governor’s signature.
States that operate their own exchanges can typically attract more companies to write health insurance policies and offer people policies at lower costs, and it would likely save the state millions of dollars in payments to the federal government.
Chaney also said he’s been consulting with former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who also supported some version of a state-based exchange while in office, about implementing a state-based program.
Currently, 21 states plus the District of Columbia have state-based exchanges, though three still operate from the federal platform. Should he follow through and sue the federal government, Chaney said he would use outside counsel and several other states told him they would join the lawsuit.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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