Mississippi Today
Mississippi arts groups scramble as Thalia Mara Hall work continue
Ripple effects continue to grow as Thalia Mara Hall’s temporary shutdown stretches into late September, Jackson arts groups adjust to keep season schedules on track and promoters eye lost opportunities and calendar dates that are slipping past.
Jackson’s premier performing arts venue was closed in early August after a weekend air-
conditioning failure and discovery of mold, sending stakeholders scrambling to secure
alternative venues or deal with cancellations. A recent state fire marshal report citing 22 fire
code violations at the building, and noting the health issues of indoor mold and human waste on its outside balcony heaped on more concern for onlookers who can only watch and wait for remediation work to begin.
The Jackson fire marshal will assist crews to address fire code issues once it is safe to return to he building, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a briefing last week. โWe don’t want anyone in Thalia Mara Hall until the remediation goes forward.โ
A contractor was on standby to address the balcony issue, he added, and city officials had already been looking into ways, such as appropriate fencing on the outside stairwell, to limit the area’s access by people who are unhoused and try to camp there.
โThalia Mara Hall is going to be just fine,โ Lumumba said, stressing that the 1968 structure is an aging building. โSo, there’s not just a set of repairs that need to be made and then we’re in pristine condition. Once we make these repairs, I’m sure we will identify other repairs that need to be made, as an aging building necessitates,โ he said.
At latest update, the city awaited proposals from new vendors and a revision from another for mold remediation. Once it starts, that work is expected to take between four and eight weeks, followed by a final inspection, clearance and certificate of occupancy. Added to the list of items to be addressed at the theater: rigging system, fire curtain and response to the fire marshal’s report.
In the meantime, loss of access deals a blow to parties that rely on the municipal building as the metro area’s best and, in some cases, only venue able to host certain productions and handle the capacity needed to make them work. Even when local nonprofit arts groups find alternative locations, changes come at a cost.
โOur ticket sales are definitely slower, and our new subscription sales are down from last year,โ Mississippi Symphony Orchestra President and Executive Director Jenny Mann said. โWe’re already spending about $20,000 extra that was unbudgeted, for all the moving we’re having to do.โ
A frequent Thalia Mara Hall user typically logging 34 days there annually for concerts and
rehearsals, MSO embarks on its 80th anniversary season away from its home stage, and with a lot of celebratory activities postponed. MSO’s flagship Bravo series opening concert Oct. 12 is now set for Madison Central High School Auditorium in Madison and the season’s first Pops concert Oct. 26 moves to Jackson Academy Performing Arts Center.
โThose schools are really bending over backwards to accommodate us,โ Mann said.
Anniversary celebrations remain on go for the Jackson Symphony League, marking 70 years, and the Mississippi Youth Symphony Orchestra, hitting the 75-year milestone. โSo, we have some things in place, but it’s just not quite the grand celebration we had hoped,.โ Mann said.
Thalia Mara Hall is crucial because funding is factored around that space, Ballet Mississippi
Executive Artistic Director David Keary said. โWhen the number of performances is lower and the number of people in the audiences is lower, your budget takes a pretty significant hit,โ he said, estimating that hit around $35,000.
โThe Nutcracker,โ Ballet Mississippi’s biggest production of the year, is now scheduled for
Jackson Preparatory School’s Fortenberry Theatre with public performances afternoon and
evening Saturday, Dec. 7, and Sunday matinee Dec. 8.
โTicket sales are impacted, school performances for children โย we can’t do that,โ Keary said. โWe’re looking at about half the seat-selling capacity.โ
Also out is a Friday night show, a festive evening aimed at young adults that was catching on, because of anticipated parking conflicts with another event at the school. โThat hurts,โ Keary said. โIt really takes a hit on the momentum.โ
He is still mulling how to adjust the production, particularly big scene changes in the first act, for the smaller site. โI do wish the city would expedite this,โ he said of fixes to Thalia Mara Hall.
Jackson-based Ballet Magnificat! also confirmed its Christmas production for Jackson Prep, with Dec. 21 and 22 performances of โLight Has Come: The Angel’s Storyโ there. As a touring company, it is already more nimble with a facility change, but the different stage size may limit backdrops and the show’s multiple changes, Executive Director Keith Thibodeaux said. He hopes three performances instead of their usual two can catch the same number of audience members. โIt’s a nice venue, and it’s a good place to watch a performance,โ Thibodeaux said.
He is heartened by the arts community’s unified pressure for transparency and progress. โWe need to get Thalia Mara Hall in order, and it’s not in order,โ he said. โIt’s sad that Jackson doesn’t have a nice theater like it did, and we would like to be there.โ
Jackson promoter Arden Barnett had to cancel two September shows by Kevin Hart (which had already been postponed once), October’s Kansas concert and โWheel of Fortune: Liveโ that was slated for November. He moved the concert by Joe Bonamassa (August) and comedian Ali Siddiq (Oct. 19) to a half-house format at the Mississippi Coliseum.
โFrom a pain level of 1 to 10, it’s an easy 10,โ Barnett said, expressing his frustration and little faith the city can meet the timeline under discussion. โNo one’s going to buy a ticket until that building is deemed 100 percent safe, and then it might be a bit of a struggle until we get a couple of shows in there. The next six months are pretty rough, even if they get it cleaned up,โ he said, with the inability to confidently book shows given the necessary lead time to announce it and sell tickets. โIt’s a huge snowball effect.โ
Innovation Arts and Entertainment CEO Adam Epstein keeps a close eye on theater
developments with their Broadway in Jackson fall events and series on the calendar in
November and December: โTina โย The Tina Turner Musicalโ Nov. 19; โCirque Dreams
Holidazeโ Dec. 12; โChicago: The Musicalโ Dec. 16; and โMannheim Steamroller Christmasโ
Dec. 27.
โIf the city doesn’t start the remediation work in the next seven days, the entire
Broadway in Jackson series is in dire jeopardy of being canceledโ through the end of this year, Epstein said.
Season tickets went on sale in August, and are down by more than half. โIt’s
crickets.โ
The Mississippi Book Festival did manage a switch that preserved some of its in-person student outreach and even scored an all-time high of 37,000 students with broadcast into classrooms around the state of children’s and YA author events before the Sept. 14 festival. Area schoolkids are traditionally bused to Thalia Mara Hall for the pre-fest activities.
โWe had to pivot, at least three weeks out from the event,โ festival director Ellen Rodgers said, adding a day to the schedule and the destination of Belhaven University for the Arts instead. Calling Thalia Mara Hall โa marquee venue we’ve come to rely on. It is such a treasure, so that was sad. We just made do. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get back there.โ
The fest’s Thursday plans with Angie Thomas went virtual when weather threats prevented
school travel, but Friday’s author Kate DiCamillo event proceeded with 750 students in-person.
Changes meant fewer books went directly into kids’ hands. In-person students get a copy of
their own of the featured author’s new book; virtually participating schools receive copies for the school library.
USA International Ballet Competition Executive Director Mona Nicholas remains optimistic that the City of Jackson will get Thalia Mara Hall back up and running as soon as possible. โThey’ve not let us down in the past and I don’t believe they’ll let us down this time,โ she said, pointing out there was already a plan in place to replace the air-conditioning, now moved up to sooner rather than later because of the latest malfunction.
Mississippi Opera Artistic Director Jay Dean said he has been told the theater should be usable by the time its April 26 production of โThe Magic Fluteโ needs the space.
โWe are not actively trying to secure an alternate space because in truth, there is no alternate space anywhere in the Jackson metro to do this,โ Dean said. โWe’re kind of in the same boat as the Broadway people โย if it doesn’t happen at Thalia Mara Hall, it doesn’t happen.โ
Dean took exception to characterizations of the theater as an old building. โIt’s not an old
building. When you look at performing arts centers around the world, it’s a very young building that has been neglected. Carnegie Hall opened in 1891, that’s an old building. The Paris Opera House opened in 1875, it’s still functioning. โฆ These are still viable performing arts centers because they’ve been taken care of and the maintenance of those facilities has been prioritized.
โThe problems at Thalia Mara Hall did not develop because the A/C was off one weekend,โ
Dean said. โThat’s the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
New health care coalition forms, including hospitals that left state hospital association
A new health care alliance will unite several of Mississippi’s largest hospital systems โ all of which left the state hospital association following controversy over Medicaid expansion โ under the umbrella of one of the state‘s largest and most influential lobbying firms.
The new group will be helmed by former Mississippi Medicaid Director Drew Snyder, who served under two Republican governors who thwarted Medicaid expansion and the flow of billions of federal dollars to provide health insurance to low-income Mississippians for over a decade.
The new collaborative will focus on โproviding sustainable solutions to challenges facing access to care,โ said a press release. It will include representatives from the state’s leading acute and trauma care hospitals, rural hospitals, mental health providers and primary care providers.
Critics, along with the Mississippi Hospital Association, say the new group’s formation is motivated by partisan politics.
A slew of hospitals left the hospital association after the organization’s political action committee made its largest-ever contribution to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, a strong supporter of Medicaid expansion, in 2023. All but one have joined the new collaborative.
This means lawmakers in 2025 will hear from two separate groups of hospitals and health care organizations, raising questions about whether their overall impact will be diluted without a unified voice.
Snyder, who declined repeated requests for comment for this story, will lead the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative under the umbrella of multi-state, Jackson-based lobbying firm Capitol Resources and its new health policy consulting division, Health Resources.
Capitol Resources is a strong supporter of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. The firm’s political action committee has contributed nearly $75,000 to Reeves since 2018.
Five of Capitol Resources’ scores of Mississippi clients hold multi-million dollar contracts with the Division of Medicaid.
A query to the Mississippi Ethics Commission published just days before Snyder announced his resignation from the Division of Medicaid sought an opinion on how a former head of an agency could work for a lobbying firm with clients in the same field as his or her public service without violating state law. Requests for opinions are anonymous.
The Ethics Commission ruled that the public official could not work for compensation on matters โwhich he or she was directly or personally involved while working for the government,โ but would not be forbidden from working for a company that does.
A national ethics expert told Mississippi Today that when public officials transition to private sector work, particularly in the same field as their public service, it can raise ethical issues.
The knowledge and information public officials hold can be used as a โleg up,โ which leads to unfairness in private companies’ and lobbying organizations’ business dealings with government entities, said professor John Pelissero, the director of Government Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
Capitol Resources has for years represented Centene, a company that currently holds $5.2 billion worth of contracts for managing Medicaid beneficiaries care through its subsidiary Magnolia Health. The company has paid the lobbying firm $3.9 million over the last decade, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
Tim Moore, the former head of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said he has concerns about the conflict posed by a lobbying firm representing two health care organizations with competing interests.
โHow do you represent a managed care company and a bunch of hospitals at the same time?โ he said.
Moore was ousted by the Mississippi Hospital Association’s Board of Governors following hospitals’ withdrawal from the organization.
Clare Hester, the founder and managing partner of Capitol Resources, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The evolution of the Mississippi Hospital Association
The Mississippi Hospital Association was for many years one of the most powerful lobbies at the Capitol. But that began to change with the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act, which created a partisan rift over whether or not the state should expand Medicaid.
The trade association splintered in May 2023, starting with the departure of the state’s largest hospital system, University of Mississippi Medical Center, in May. Four additional hospitals, all led by Gregg Gibbes, left the association in 2024.
Hospital leaders at the time declined to say what precipitated their decision to leave, other than to cite concerns about the hospital association’s leadership. But the exodus was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the association’s support for Presley and, specifically, Medicaid expansion.
Research has shown that Medicaid expansion would provide millions of dollars to Mississippi’s struggling hospital system.
As Reeves faced an uphill reelection bid, due in part to his opponent’s support of Medicaid expansion and his adamant opposition, he worked with Snyder to create a new program to provide supplemental payments to hospitals to offset low Medicaid payments. While the program did not directly support low-income Mississippians, it was estimated to generate $700 million for the state’s largest hospitals.
Republican House leaders pushing for Medicaid expansion in the last legislative session said the program prevented some large hospitals from being strong advocates for expansion, in part due to fear that Gov. Reeves would punish such a move by doing away with the expanded payments.
The Mississippi Hospital Association has 76 current hospital members, according to its online directory. Some are members of hospital systems.
โThe Mississippi Hospital Association will continue to be the trusted voice in health care and to offer education and quality advocacy solutions based on sound health care policy โ and not politics โ as we have successfully done for almost 100 years,โ president and CEO Richard Roberson told Mississippi Today. Roberson is the former head of TrueCare, a provider-led, nonprofit managed care organization that contracts with Medicaid.
Kent Nicaud, one of Reeves’ top campaign donors and the president and CEO of Memorial Hospital, will serve as chair of the collaborative’s board. Memorial Health System left the hospital association in 2023, and is a current client of Capitol Resources.
Moore said having two major health care trade associations in the state will โcreate division among the industry, which is not good.โ
โ…The best thing for all hospitals is to be united in one voice, because they have similar issues, whether they’re a small hospital or a large hospital,โ he said.
Along with hospitals that left the association, Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative incorporates several existing Capitol Resources clients, including the state’s 21 Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, and Universal Health Services, a company with five behavioral health centers in Mississippi.
โFor too long, too many health providers have been siloed in our advocacy. It’s time to sit down at the same table and work together,โ said Terrence Shirley, CEO of the Community Health Center Association of Mississippi, which represents the Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, in a press release.
Other members of the new group include Methodist Rehabilitation Center and Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale.
The group’s members are based in 78 of Mississippi’s 82 counties.
Ochsner Medical Center, which left the Mississippi Hospital Association last year and is a client of Capitol Resources, is not listed as a member of the new collaborative. Ochsner did not respond to Mississippi Today by the time of publication.
Geoff Pender contributed reporting.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1926
Nov. 5, 1926
Victoria Gray Adams, one of the founding members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was born near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
โ(There are) those who are in the Movement and those who have the Movement in them,โ she said. โThe Movement is in me, and I know it always will be.โ
In 1961, this door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman convinced her preacher to open their church to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which began pushing for voter registration. A year later, she became a field secretary for SNCC and led a boycott of businesses in Hattiesburg, later helping found the umbrella group, the Council of Federated Organization, for all the civil rights groups working in Mississippi.
In 1964, she and other civil rights leaders fought the Jim Crow laws and practices that kept Black Mississippians from voting, marching to the courthouse in the chilly rain to protest. By the end of the day, nearly 150 had made their way to register to vote.
Adams became the first known woman in Mississippi to run for the U.S. Senate, unsuccessfully challenging longtime Sen. John Stennis. She also helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It was time, she said, to pay attention to Black Mississippians, โwho had not even had the leavings from the American political table.โ
In August 1964, she joined party members in challenging Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention.
โWe really were the true Democratic Party,โ she recalled in a 2004 interview. โWe accomplished the removal of the wall, the curtain of fear in Mississippi for African-Americans demanding their rights.โ
Four years later, the party that once barred her now welcomed her.
She continued her activism and later talked of that success: โWe eliminated the isolation of the African-Americans from the political process. I believe that Mississippi now has the highest number of African-American elected officials in the nation. We laid the groundwork for that.โ
In 2006, she died of cancer.
โWhen I met โฆ that community of youthful civil rights activists, I realized that this was exactly what I’d been looking for all of my conscious existence,โ she said. โIt was like coming home.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Vote today: Mississippi voters head to the polls. Hereโs what you need to know
Polls in Mississippi will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today as voters make their picks for presidential, congressional, state judicial and some local races.
READ MORE: View Mississippi sample ballot
Voters are reminded to bring a photo identification. This can include a valid Mississippi driver’s license, an identification or employee identification card issued by any government entity of the U.S. or state of Mississippi, a U.S. passport, a military photo ID card, a current student ID card issued by an accredited college or university or a Mississippi voter ID card. For more information on voter ID rules, check here.
READ MORE: Vote Tuesday: Candidates battle for seats on state’s highest courts
Those who do not have a valid ID can vote affidavit, but must return and present a photo ID within five days for their ballot to count. Voters waiting in line as polls close at 7 p.m. will still be allowed to vote. If you vote absentee or affidavit, you can track the status of your ballot here.
POLLING PLACE LOCATOR: Use the secretary of state’s online locator to find where you vote
Stay tuned to Mississippi Today for live results, starting after polls close.
LISTEN: Podcast: Mississippi’s top election official discusses Tuesday’s election
The Mississippi secretary of state’s office offers an online resource, My Election Day, where voters can locate or confirm their polling place, view sample ballots and view current office holders. Those with doubts or questions about their precinct locations are urged to contact their local election officials. Contact info for local election officials is also provided on the My Election Day site.
READ MORE: Mississippi Election 2024: What will be on Tuesday’s ballot?
The secretary of state’s office, U.S. attorney’s office and the state Democratic and Republican parties will have observers across the state monitoring elections and responding to complaints.
The secretary of state’s elections division can be contacted at 1-800-829-6786 or ElectionsAnswers@sos.ms.gov.
The U.S. attorney’s office investigates election fraud, intimidation or voting rights issues and can be contacted at 601-973-2826 or 601-973-2855, or complaints can be filed directly with the Department of Justice Civil Rights division at civilrights.justice.gov. Local law enforcement holds primary jurisdiction and serves as a first responder for alleged crimes or emergencies at voting precincts.
The secretary of state’s office also provides some Election Day law reminders:
- It is unlawful to campaign for any candidate within 150 feet from any entrance to a polling place, unless on private property.
- The polling places should be clear of people for 30 feet from every entrance except for election officials, voters waiting to vote or authorized poll watchers.
- Voters are prohibited from taking photos of their marked ballots.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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