Mississippi Today

Dentist still serving on watchdog board, despite covering up $29K stolen from the Mississippi Dental Association — some of it going to casinos

Published

2 years ago

May 11, 2023

A Gulfport dentist continues to serve on the state dental watchdog board, despite making thousands in unauthorized campaign contributions from a Mississippi Dental Association bank account, including $5,400 to Gov. Tate Reeves, and despite covering up $29,225 stolen from that account, some of which went to casinos.

Jeff Zimmerman continues to decide the fates of dentists accused of improper or illegal conduct, despite the pleas of the association and the board for Reeves to remove Zimmerman from the Mississippi State Board of Dental Examiners.

Jeff Zimmerman, a Gulfport dentist, is a member of the Mississippi Board of Dental Examiners.

“Had the MDA chosen to file charges against Dr. Zimmerman and if he were found guilty, it would be a felony conviction that could lead to a fine and imprisonment,” the association’s investigative report says. “The fact that no charges were filed in lieu of return of the stolen funds does not eliminate the fact that Dr. Zimmerman admits to misappropriating $5,900 of the MDA’s money that had been entrusted to him in his position as Treasurer without proper authority.”

Under state law, only Reeves has the power to remove a board member “on proof of inefficiency, incompetency, immorality, unprofessional conduct, or continued absence from the state, for failure to perform duties, or for other sufficient cause,” according to the l a w.

Asked about Reeves’ lack of action, Press Secretary Shelby Wilcher said the governor didn’t receive formal notification of the board’s order in the case until April 5.

“The Governor is continuing to evaluate the Consent Order in the light of his statutory duties pursuant to Mississippi Code Section 73-9-9,” she said in an email. “The Governor holds each and every one of his appointees to the highest ethical and moral standards.”

Zimmerman did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment about his continuing service on the board in light of that order.

The Mississippi Dental Association has long been active in political circles. Over the past quarter century, the association has contributed more than $1 million in donations through its Political Action Committee, nearly two thirds of it to Republican candidates, including $21,000 to Reeves, according to followthemoney.org.

Three months after becoming treasurer for the association’s District 5 in July 2019, Zimmerman obtained an unauthorized debit card for the District 5 bank account, according to the investigative report obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which is part of Mississippi Today. Over the next four months, that card was used to make more than 150 unauthorized purchases, totaling $29,225.

Records show many purchases at Walmart, payments to the Island View Casino in Gulfport and repeated $500 cash withdrawals from an ATM.

On Nov. 7, 2019, Zimmerman made an unauthorized political contribution of $500 to Michael Watson, a candidate for secretary of state, from the District 5 checking account, according to the report.

Watson did not respond to a request for comment.

On April 23, 2021, Zimmerman used association funds to make an unauthorized political contribution of $400 to Reeves’ campaign. Three months later, Reeves appointed him to the watchdog board.

Wilcher cited the association’s overwhelming support for Zimmerman for the board’s District 5 position — 21 votes compared to three votes for his next closest competitor.

“Because Dr. Zimmerman received the overwhelming majority of the votes cast, effective July 1, 2021, the Governor appointed Dr. Zimmerman to the Board to represent Dental District 5,” she said.

A month later, Zimmerman used association funds to make an unauthorized political contribution of $5,000 to Reeves’ campaign.

District 5 President Patton Webb Jr. learned of the $5,000 check when the Reeves campaign thanked the association for the contribution. He contacted Zimmerman and asked him to get the check back, according to the report.

Wilcher said the Reeves’ campaign returned the $5,000 contribution on that same day. She said the campaign hasn’t received a request to return the $400 contribution.

The report says Webb also asked Zimmerman to provide bank statements for the past three years. When Zimmerman finally shared those statements a month later, Webb discovered other unauthorized purchases and political contributions.

Confronted by District 5 officials, Zimmerman blamed an employee for the $29,225 in illicit purchases, saying an employee stole the card from his desk, according to the report. He said he fired the employee and arranged repayments for restitution.

Although he discovered those unauthorized purchases in January 2020, he didn’t replace those funds until after District 5 leaders asked for bank statements in October 2021, according to the report.

“He further stated that he did not report the theft to Dr. Webb or anyone else in District V,” the report says. “It was recommended that Dr. Zimmerman step down as MDA District V Secretary/Treasurer, which he did.”

Past board member Frank Conaway of Bay St. Louis said he viewed all of the District 5 bank records, which suggested “some money had been moved around that did not seem appropriate. It was closer to $40,000.”

As for the campaign contributions, District 5 members never voted to approve them, he said. “In the history of the 5^th District, we have never done donations that way. It was Dr. Zimmerman acting alone when he did that.”

He said he wrote a letter on behalf of District 5 members that “we had lost confidence” in Zimmerman representing them, but the letter was never mailed under advice from legal counsel.

When questioned, Zimmerman admitted that he had held the reimbursement of these stolen funds in his own bank account until Webb discovered the theft, according to the report.

Asked how the association felt about Zimmerman continuing to serve on the state dental watchdog board, President Rebecca Courtney said by email that the association isn’t affiliated with the board or involved in any board decisions.

Asked if the association would support a change in state law that would allow the state board to remove board members who have violated ADA ethics and the Professional Code of Conduct, she replied, “We would always support positivity to strengthen the Board of Dental Examiners and ensure they are following proper ethical conduct.”

In February 2022, Webb filed a complaint with the watchdog board regarding Zimmerman’s actions. The board investigated and determined that he and the fired employee had “failed to fully cooperate” with the investigation by “withholding information,” according to the report.

The board concluded Zimmerman had violated both state dental ethics and the American Dental Association’s Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct, according to the consent order signed by both the board and Zimmerman.

In that order, he admitted that more than $29,000 had been removed from the District 5 bank account for illicit purchases and $5,900 had been removed for unauthorized campaign contributions.

He repaid the money taken for the purchases. He agreed to pay a $2,000 fine and finish a 90-day ethics program.

On March 31, the board vo t ed unanimously to censure Zimmerman, who can no longer serve as an officer or on a committee, but he can continue to vote on whether to revoke a dentist’s license.

The board’s executive director, Denny Hydrick, said Wednesday that neither he nor the board had any comment beyond the consent order.

On Jan. 13, District 5 officials voted to expel Zimmerman for his actions and recommended his removal from the watchdog board.

“Board Members must be beyond reproach and should be held to a higher standard of behavior than the rank & file dentist in Mississippi,” the report concluded. “They investigate complaints against dentists, hygienists, and radiology permit holders made by the Public and other Agencies. They then sit in judgment of these license holdings in hearings that can take someone’s license to practice their profession and their ability to make a living in the profession that they worked and trained for. Board Members must be above the law. Dr. Zimmerman has proven that he has violated the trust given his position.”

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

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Mississippi Today

Mississippi is ‘A Complete Unknown’ in Bob Dylan biopic

Published

2 hours ago

January 8, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-08 09:43:00

The new film, “A Complete Unknown,” tells the story of Bob Dylan’s rise to success in the early 1960s, but the movie leaves out two fascinating Mississippi stories.

On the evening of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his first civil rights speech in which he declared that the grandchildren of enslaved Black Americans “are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

Hours later, Mississippi NAACP leader and World War II veteran Medgar Evers was fatally shot in the back outside his home in Jackson.

Less than a month later, Dylan (portrayed in the movie by Timothée Chalamet) unveiled a new song in a cotton field several miles south of Greenwood, where Evers’ assassin, Byron De La Beckwith, lived.

That field happened to be owned by Laura McGhee, the sister of Gus Courts, who was forced to flee Mississippi after surviving an assassination attempt in 1955. Her three sons, Clarence, Silas and Jake, took part in protests that helped integrate the Leflore Theatre in Greenwood. Her house was shot into and firebombed, but she and her sons kept on fighting.

Dozens of Black Americans listened as they parked under umbrellas to block out the blazing sun while Dylan debuted the song, a scene that Danny Lyon captured in photos.

As he strummed chords, he told those gathered, “I just wanted to sing one song because I haven’t slept in two nights, and I’m a little shaky. But this is about Medgar Evers.”

His shakiness showed. He had to restart once before continuing.

Titled “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Dylan’s song focused on how Evers’ assassin and other poor white Mississippians are nothing more than a pawn in the white politicians’ “game.”

A South politician preaches to the poor white man

“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain

You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain

And the Negro’s name

Is used, it is plain

For the politician’s gain

As he rises to fame

And the poor white remains

On the caboose of the train

But it ain’t him to blame

He’s only a pawn in their game

In the final verse, Dylan spoke about the civil rights leader.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught

They lowered him down as a king

But when the shadowy sun sets on the one

That fired the gun

He’ll see by his grave

On the stone that remains

Carved next to his name

His epitaph plain

Only a pawn in their game

Dylan also sang, “Blowing in the Wind,” which Peter, Paul and Mary had just turned into a top hit.

Dylan’s mentor, Pete Seeger (portrayed in the movie by Edward Norton) also performed at this music festival organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been fighting to register Black Mississippians to vote.

Dylan returned to New York City. During the day, he would hang out at the SNCC office, recalled civil rights leader Joyce Ladner. “He would get on the typewriter and start writing.”

She and her sister, Dorie, were no strangers to the civil rights movement. They had been expelled from Jackson State University in 1961 for taking part in a silent protest in support of the Tougaloo College students arrested for integrating the downtown Jackson library.

Joyce and Dorie Ladner discuss their roles in the civil rights movement. Credit: Library of Congress

Now attending Tougaloo, the sisters helped with preparations for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After working days at the SNCC office, they would spend nights at the apartment of Rachelle Horowitz, the march’s transportation coordinator.

Each night, they arrived at about 11 p.m., only for Dylan to sing his new songs to Dorie until well past midnight, Ladner said.

That annoyed her because she was trying to get some sleep. Each night when they arrived, “we could hear him from the elevator,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, not him again.’”

At the August 1963 march, Dylan performed the two same songs he sang in that Delta cotton field, as well as others, this time before a crowd of more than 250,000. Folk singer Joan Baez (portrayed in the movie by Monica Barbaro) harmonized.

Not long after that performance, Ladner said Dylan visited Dorie at Tougaloo and once again sang her some of his songs before he said that he and the others “had to be going. They were driving down Highway 61.”

That highway connects Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to the Mississippi Delta. In 1965, Dylan released “Highway 61 Revisited,” generally regarded as one of the best albums of all time.

Dylan moved on, but Ladner said Dylan never forgot her sister, Dorie, a major civil rights figure who passed away last year.

“Whenever he performed in Washington, D.C., she would hang out backstage with him and the guys,” Ladner recalled. “That went on for years.”

She said she believes Dylan penned “Outlaw Blues” about her sister.

I got a girl in Jackson, I ain’t gonna say her name

She’s a brown-skin woman, but I love her just the same.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1815

Published

5 hours ago

January 8, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-08 07:00:00

Jan. 8, 1815

More than a century and a half after James Roberts published his narrative of fighting in two wars, the memoir is still available for sale.

A U.S. Army unit that included Black and Choctaw soldiers helped defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans.

While peace negotiations to end the War of 1812 were underway, the British carried out a raid in hopes of capturing New Orleans. After the British captured a gunboat flotilla, Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson put the city under martial law.

Despite being outnumbered, the U.S. Army force of about 2,000 (including a battalion of free Black men, mostly refugees from Santo Domingo, and up to 60 Choctaw Indians) defeated the British.

After the victory, Andrew Jackson honored these soldiers of color with a proclamation: “I invited you to share in the perils and to divide the glory of your white countrymen. I expected much from you, for I was not uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable to an invading foe. I knew that you could endure hunger and thirst and all the hardships of war. I knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that, like ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man – But you surpass my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities, that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.”

Prior to the battle, Jackson had promised Black soldiers pay, acres of property and freedom to those who were enslaved. That inspired James Roberts to fight as hard as he could in the Battle of New Orleans.

“In hope of freedom,” he said, “we would run through a troop and leap over a wall.”

Although Roberts would lose a finger and suffer a serious wound to the head, the pledge proved hollow for him, just as it was in the Revolutionary War when he had been promised freedom and instead was separated from his wife and children and sold for $1,500.

The memoir he self-published in 1858 is once again available for sale.

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