fbpx
Connect with us

Mississippi Today

Election preview: Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney faces challenger Bruce Burton on Nov. 7

Published

on

Election preview: Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney faces challenger Bruce Burton on Nov. 7

Republican Mike Chaney, seeking his fifth term as Mississippi insurance commissioner, is being challenged by Democrat Bruce Burton in Tuesday’s general election.

Burton, who has unsuccessfully for both the Mississippi Court of Appeals and the Central District Public Service Commissioner, is a attorney. He was born in Shaw.

Burton was unopposed in the Democratic primary earlier this year. Chaney defeated Mitch Young in the August Republican primary, winning 80% of the vote.

Chaney previously served 15 years in the , first in the House and later in the Senate.

“He is charged with providing with the maximum amount of consumer protection possible,” Chaney’s campaign website says. “The aim is to create the highest degree of economic security, quality of and public safety for citizens at the lowest possible cost.”

In earlier campaigns, Burton was described as someone who โ€œbelieves in hard work and in helping others, and in truth, honesty, and integrity. Bruce is very down to earth, and he is authentically himself. With Bruce there is no pretentiousness. What you see is what you get. Bruce’s genuineness is easily observed from the moment you meet him.ย He never meets a stranger.โ€

Chaney, like most running for statewide office this year in Mississippi, is viewed as a heavy favorite.

According to the latest campaign finance filed with the Secretary of State’s office, Chaney has $247,025 cash on hand. His campaign has spent $244,515 this year.

Burton has not raised nor spent any funds and has no cash on hand, according to his filings with the Mississippi Secretary of State.

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

Mississippi Today

Hinds County loses fight over control of jail

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-11-01 12:57:00

The sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.   

Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, a failure to protect detainees from harm. 

However, the appeals court called the new injunction โ€œoverly broadโ€ in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.

The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be

The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as โ€œfederal intrusion into RDC’s budgetโ€ โ€“ especially if the receivership has no end date. 

Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.ย 

In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which people facing trial. 

โ€œBut the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,โ€ the appeals court wrote.  

This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022. 

The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in

The county had a to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old and use of force. 

Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.

But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff. 

The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference. 

Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work. 

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

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

2 out of 5 child care teachers make so little they need public assistance tosupport their families

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Jackie Mader, The Hechinger – 2024-11-01 08:49:00

This story about child care wages was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit,
independent organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger’s early childhood newsletter.

Caring for children during their first few years is a complex and critical job: A child’s
brain develops more in the first five years than at any other point in . Yet in America,
individuals engaged in this crucial role are paid less than animal caretakers and
dressing room attendants.

That’s a major finding of one of two new reports on the dismal treatment of child care
workers. Together, the reports offer a distressing picture of how child care staff are
faring economically, the troubling changes low wages have caused to the
workforce.

Early childhood workers nationally earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, resulting in
poverty-level earnings for 13 percent of such educators, according to the first report, the
Early Childhood Workforce Index 2024. Released earlier this month by the Center for
the Study of Child Care Employment at the of California, Berkeley, the annual
report also found:

? 43 percent of families of early educators rely on public assistance like
food stamps and .

? Pay inequity exists within these low wages: Black early childhood
educators earn about $8,000 less per year than their white peers. The
same pay gap exists between early educators who work with infants and
toddlers and those who work with preschoolers, who have more
opportunities to work in school districts that pay higher wages.

? Wages for early educators are rising more slowly than wages in other
industries, including fast food and retail.

In part due to these conditions, the industry is losing some of its highest-educated
workers, according to a second new report, by Chris M. Herbst, a professor at Arizona
University’s School of Public Affairs. That study compares the pay of child care
workers with that of workers in other lower-income professions, including cooks and
retail workers; it finds child care workers are the tenth lowest-paid occupation out of
around 750 in the . The report also looks at the โ€˜relative quality’ of child care
staff, as defined by math and literacy scores and education level. Higher-educated
workers, Herbst suggests, are being siphoned off by higher-paying jobs.

That’s led to a โ€œbit of a death spiralโ€ in terms of how child care work is perceived, and
contributes to the persistent low wages, he said in an interview. Some additional
findings from Herbst’s study:

? Higher-educated women increasingly find employment in the child care
industry to be less attractive. The share of workers in the child care
industry with a bachelor’s degree barely budged over the past few
decades, increasing by only 0.3 percent. In contrast, the share of those in
the industry who have 12 years of schooling but no high school degree,
quadrupled.

? Median numeracy and literacy scores for female child care workers
(who are the majority of the industry staff) fall at the 35 th and 36 th
percentiles respectively, to all female workers. Improving these
scores is important, Herbst says, considering the importance of education
in the early years, when children experience rapid brain .

This doesn’t mean child care staff with lower education levels can’t be good early
educators. Patience, communication skills and a commitment to working with young
children also matter greatly, Herbst writes. However, higher education levels may mean
staff have a stronger background not only in English and math but also in topics like
behavior modification and special education, which are sometimes left out of
certification programs for child care teachers.

You can read Herbst’s full report here, and the 2024 workforce index here.

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

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1890

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-01 07:00:00

Nov. 1, 1890

Credit: Wikipedia

Mississippi adopted a new constitution aimed at barring Black voters and restoring white supremacy. The disenfranchisement clause struck all voters from the rolls and then required them to register again to vote โ€” but only approved them if they paid poll taxes, could read and pass a quiz on the constitution. 

โ€œDressed up in the genteel garb of bringing integrity to the booth,โ€ โ€˜One Person, No Vote‘ opined, โ€œthis feigned legal innocence was legislative evil genius.โ€ 

There was no mystery to those involved. 

โ€œThere is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter,โ€ future Gov. and U.S. Sen. James K. Vardaman declared, โ€œMississippi’s constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the n—– from .โ€ 

The changes worked. Within a decade, the number of Black registered voters fell from more than 130,000 to less than 1,300. Other Southern states followed Mississippi’s , barring Black voters in every way they could. There were โ€œgrandfather clauses,โ€ which required voters to have a grandfather who voted. There were even โ€œwhite primaries,โ€ where white Southern Democrats barred Black voters from their primaries. 

โ€œJim Crow was never policed just by laws written out on paper,โ€ according to โ€˜Our Unfinished March‘. โ€œIt was enforced with broken bones and crushed skulls, with rope wrapped around trees and knots tied around necks, with bodies displayed in town squares or made to disappear at the bottom of rivers.โ€ 

Unlike Mississippi’s prior constitution, voters did not approve or ratify the document. The lone Black member of the constitutional constitution was Isaiah T. Montgomery, who was once enslaved by and had since helped found the all-Black town, Mount Bayou. Montgomery voted for the constitution, hoping this disenfranchisement might mean an end to violence against Black . It didn’t.

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

Continue Reading

Trending