Mississippi Today

No answers, no money: Lauderdale officials end funding to state health agency for county health department

Published

1 year ago

August 10, 2023

The Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors decided this year not to award over $200,000 to the state health agency for the operation of the county health department as it had done the previous year.

But Lauderdale officials say that’s not because they don’t care about public health — in fact, they’re spending more than $2 million of their pandemic relief funds upgrading the facility’s air-conditioning system.

They say it’s because the Mississippi State Department of Health couldn’t adequately answer what that money was going toward.

County health departments are funded by a mixture of state and county money. Usually, the county provides a building, while the Health Department provides staffing, according to State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney. The facilities provide essential public health services such as vaccinations, STI testing, diabetes and hypertension care, pap smears, pregnancy testing and more.

And as hospitals struggle amid a statewide health care crisis and more of the state’s wellbeing may fall on publicly funded health care, Edney has stressed the importance of these local clinics.

The state Department of Health has been tasked with mounting responsibilities over the years, but their state funding has remained relatively stable. Health officials are still reeling from the pandemic, and 40% of positions at the agency were unfilled as of May.

Daniel Edney, M.D., is the State Health Officer. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Edney acknowledged at last month’s state Board of Health meeting that his agency had dropped the ball with Lauderdale, and it may not be an isolated incident.

“We did not do a good enough job with that board,” he said. “Fires break out — I personally have been going and putting those fires out — but we’re already talking internally about doing a better job on our regional level of our folks being at board of supervisors meetings, just going and saying, ‘Hello.’”

Chris Lafferty, administrator of Lauderdale County, isn’t aware of any changes at the county health department, so he didn’t realize there was a “fire.” His conversations with Mississippi Today this week was the first time he had heard of any issues, he said.

“The question of need comes up — was the money really needed? If it was, why didn’t they articulate that?” Lafferty said. “None of the local leadership has contacted us. Now they’re all over it. They’ve had a year.”

In 2022, Lafferty sent a letter to Susan Rigdon, a division director at the agency, informing her that the Board of Supervisors didn’t approve any funding for the agency. The previous year, the board had allocated $242,100 in its $65 million budget to the Department of Health.

Lafferty said he hadn’t heard back from the agency, nor did he hear any complaints, until Mississippi Today recounted a quote from Edney at a state Board of Health meeting on July 12, more than nine months later.

“It was a $200,000-a-year appropriation that (Lauderdale County) defunded,” Edney said at the meeting. “They took us out of their budget totally.”

According to Lafferty, it wasn’t an easy decision. More than a year ago, the Board of Supervisors was determined to avoid a tax increase in Lauderdale, and Lafferty started looking at how to save dollars.

So, he called David Caulfield, the Health Department’s regional administrator for the Central Public Health Region which includes Lauderdale and 27 other counties. Lafferty wanted him to explain where the nearly quarter of a million dollars was going – whether it was staying in Lauderdale County and what services it was funding. Caulfield couldn’t tell him, Lafferty said.

“I think those are reasonable questions,” he said. “I cannot in good conscience … ask the Board of Supervisors to give money to an organization that could not answer simple questions.”

Lafferty recommended to the Board of Supervisors, then, that the funding be cut, and Lauderdale County did not have a tax hike last year, he said.

Chris Lafferty has been Lauderdale’s County Administrator since 2016. Credit: Lauderdale County

According to Lafferty, no services have been cut or reduced at the county health department as a result – which begged the question, what did the Department of Health do with the $242,100 last year?

Mississippi Today reached out to the Health Department on July 31 with questions about Lauderdale County’s funding to their agency.

The agency replied with an emailed statement that said it provided the same information to Lauderdale County last year as it had in prior years, but it’s unclear what specific information that included.

“Each year, information is provided to each county board of supervisors that includes overall budget information of each county health department and the services these funds support,” the emailed statement from spokesperson Liz Sharlot reads. “Our local administrators also meet with county officials, as needed, to answer any questions and provide additional information. This information was provided to Lauderdale last year as it had been provided in years past.”

The statement goes on to say that the money from Lauderdale was funding county health department personnel as well as equipment and supplies.

Mississippi Today reached out to the state Health Department again on Tuesday with follow-up questions, including whether the Health Department provided the county officials with the information they sought regarding how the money was spent and how the supervisors’ decision not to award the agency any money impacted the county health department’s operations.

Spokesperson Elizabeth Grey did not answer any specific questions, including if and how the Lauderdale County Health Department was impacted. She said on Thursday that Edney and Caulfield were working to schedule a meeting with the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors to rectify the situation — after that meeting, the agency would respond to Mississippi Today’s questions, she said.

Mississippi state law mandates that county supervisors “shall be authorized” to make necessary appropriations to the Department of Health to pay the salary of the employees of the county health department, as well as supplies. It goes on to say more clearly that the board “shall provide” an office, or building, for the health department.

It’s not clear if most counties are providing additional funding beyond building costs for their health departments — the state Health Department did not respond to that question from Mississippi Today.

Jonathan Wells, president of the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors, says the county provides a building — and more.

“So, the Legislature says — and I would call it an unfunded mandate — that we supply the Department of Health a building,” he said. “Not only are we doing that, but we’re putting $2.5 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money into a new HVAC system for that building.”

The county continues to pay for utilities in that building, security services as well as other general upkeep, Wells said.

That won’t change next year, according to Lafferty — but neither will their zero-dollar allocation toward the State Health Department.

On Wednesday, Caulfield visited Lafferty in his office, holding a budget request for the upcoming year in his hands, he said. Lafferty says he is still unclear what the county’s funding responsibilities are and will recommend that the Board of Supervisors continue to withhold funding to the state Department of Health.

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

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Mississippi Today

Senate panel weighs how much — or whether — to cut state taxes

Published

10 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2024-11-04 15:42:00

A group of state senators on Monday grappled with how much to slash state taxes or if they should cut them at all, portending a major policy debate at the Capitol for next year’s legislative session.

The Senate Fiscal Policy Study Group solicited testimony from the state government‘s leading experts on budget, economic and tax policies to prepare for an almost certain intense debate in January over how much they should trim state taxes while balancing the need to fund government services.

Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, a Republican from Flowood whose committee has jurisdiction over tax policy, told Mississippi Today that he wanted senators to have basic facts in front of them before they help decide next year if Mississippi should cut taxes.

“We’re getting a tax cut the next two years whether we do anything or not,” Harkins said. “I just want to make sure we have all the facts in front of people to understand we have a clear picture of how much revenue we’re bringing in.”

Mississippi is already phasing in a major tax cut. After a raucous debate in 2022, lawmakers agreed to phase in an income tax cut. In two years it will leave Mississippi with a flat 4% tax on income over $10,000, one of the lowest rates in the nation.

However, the top two legislative leaders, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the Senate and House Speaker Jason White, have both recently said they want legislators to consider new tax cut policies.

Hosemann, the Republican leader of the Senate, has publicly said he would like to see the state’s grocery tax, the highest of its kind in the nation, reduced, though he hasn’t specified how much of a reduction or how long it would take for the cut to be implemented.

White, a Republican from West, said last week that he would like to see the state’s 4% income tax phased out and have the state’s 7% grocery tax cut in half over time.

“We are hoping to construct a tax system that, yes, prioritizes certain needs in our state, but it also protects and rewards taxpayers,” White said last week.

But it’s difficult to collect accurate data on the state’s grocery tax, and state lawmakers must grapple with a laundry list of spending needs and obligations based on testimony from state agency leaders on Monday.

Mississippi currently has a 7% sales tax, which is applied to groceries. The state collects the tax but remits 18.5% back to cities. For many municipalities, the sales tax is a significant source of revenue.

If state lawmakers want to reduce the grocery tax without impacting cities, they could pass a new law to change the diversion amounts or appropriate enough money to make the municipalities whole.

State Revenue Commissioner Chris Graham said the Mississippi Department of Revenue, the agency in charge of collecting state taxes, does not have a mechanism in place for accurately capturing how much money cities collect in grocery taxes. This is because the tax on groceries is the same as non-grocery items.

However, Graham estimates that the state collects roughly $540 million in taxes from grocery items.

The other problem lawmakers would have in implementing significant tax cuts is a growing list of spending needs in Mississippi, a state with abject poverty, water and sewer and other infrastructure woes and some of the worst health metrics in the nation.

Representatives from the Legislative Budget Office, the group that advises lawmakers on tax and spending policy, told senators that lawmakers will also be faced with rising costs in the public employee retirement system, the Medicaid budget, public education, state employee health insurance, and state infrastructure projects.

State agencies, including the employee retirement system, also requested $751 million more for the coming budget year.

“That’s the billion dollar question, I guess,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, said. “How we’re able to fund basic government services?”

Harkins and Hopson said the committee would likely meet again before the Legislature convenes for its 2025 session on January 7.

A House committee on tax cuts has also been holding hearings, and White in September held a summit on tax policy.

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

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Mississippi Today

Already dire lack of affordable housing for low-income Mississippians on verge of worsening

Published

14 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Simeon Gates – 2024-11-04 11:00:00

In Mississippi, where there’s already a dearth of 50,000 or more affordable homes for extremely low-income residents, that number could grow in the next five years.

Housing units available under the federal Low Income Tax Credit program could lose their affordability by 2030 –a number estimated nationwide to be 350,000 with 2,917 in Mississippi, alone; 496 in the state already have.

The federal program responsible for most of the nation’s affordable housing is expiring.

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit, introduced as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, provides for developers to buy, build and restore low-income housing units. Under the deal, the housing only needs to stay low-rent for 30 years. Construction began in the early 1990s.

Some LIHTC housing will remain affordable due to other subsidies, nonprofits, state law and individual landlords.

“I think the low-income housing tax credit has done everything that it can to address the need for affordable housing around the state,” said Scott Spivey, executive director of the Mississippi Housing Corporation, a state office that administers the program and works with the state government and those in the affordable housing industry to create and support affordable housing

Spivey supports the proposed Affordable Housing Credit and Improvement Act, a federal bill that would expand upon the low-income housing tax credit in several ways, including giving developers more credit for certain projects for low-income households and changing tenant eligibility rules.

The bill was introduced in the House and the Senate last session, and is co-sponsored by Mississippi Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker and in the House by Reps. Mike Ezell, and Michael Guest. As of this spring, both bills are in committee.

While housing has become a major issue for Americans, getting legislation passed has been challenging. “Everybody knows that housing is an issue, but it gets caught up with everything else…and it kind of gets lost in the shuffle,” said Spivey.

This issue is especially important in Mississippi, where demand for housing is high across all incomes.

“All the market studies that we see that come with the applications tell us that there’s a huge need for affordable housing across the state at all the income bands” said Spivey.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, almost a third of Mississippi renters are extremely low income; 65% of them are severely cost burdened, meaning they spent more than half their income on rent. The majority of these households are seniors, disabled people, single caregivers of young children, people enrolled in school, or other.

Director of Housing Law at the Mississippi Center for Justice, Ashley Richardson said housing problems worsened after Mississippi stopped participating in the federal rental assistance program in 2022.

MCJ’s work on housing includes a statewide eviction hotline, investigating instances of housing discrimination, and more.

Richardson praised the LIHTC program, but echoed Spivey’s concerns. “Even with the affordable housing we do have in Mississippi, we are still at a lack,” she said.

The National Housing Preservation Database estimates Mississippi is short 52,421 affordable and available rental homes for low-income people. The National Low Income Housing Coalition puts the figure at 49,478.

Richardson wants the state to deal with issues like providing more tenant protections and rental assistance. There’s also a need to improve homes that are rundown or in poor condition, and many housing nonprofits are running out of funding.

Spivey said people should talk to their property managers and learn about their rights. MHC’s website has resources for homebuyers and renters.

As the housing crisis goes on, there are options for people struggling to find and keep affordable housing and an effort to take action at the federal and state levels.

Some aspiring low-income homeowners may qualify for Habitat for Humanity, a program that builds homes for families in need. Families who qualify work on the homes alongside volunteers, pay an affordable mortgage and receive financial literacy education.

New applicants must meet the qualifications, including a good debt-income ratio, 125 hours of sweat equity and taking classes on financial literacy, home repairs, and being a good neighbor.

Merrill McKewen, executive director for Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Capital Area, emphasized the importance of housing to individuals and communities.

“There are untold studies that have been done that, you’ve gotta have a safe, decent, affordable place to live. The children are better students, the parents are better employees…it grounds you to a community that you can contribute to and be a part of. It is the American dream, to own a home, which is what we’re all about,” she said.

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

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Mississippi Today

Mississippi Election 2024: What will be on Tuesday’s ballot?

Published

14 hours ago

November 4, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-11-04 10:00:00

Mississippians will go to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5, to elect federal and state judicial posts and some local offices, such as for election commissioners and school board members.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. To find your polling place, use the secretary of state’s locator, or call your local county circuit clerk.

The following is a list of the candidates for federal and judicial posts with brief bios:

President

Kamala Harris, current vice president and Democratic nominee for president. Her running mate is Tim Walz.
Donald Trump, former president and current Republican nominee. His running mate is J.D. Vance.
Robert Kennedy Jr. remains on the ballot in Mississippi even though he has endorsed Trump. His running mate is Nicole Shanahan.
Jill Stein is the Green Party candidate. Her running mate is Rudolph Ware.
Five other candidates will be on the Mississippi ballot for president. For a complete list of presidential candidates, see the sample ballot.

U.S. Senate

Ty Pinkins is the Democratic nominee. He is a Rolling Fork native and attorney, representing, among other clients, those alleging unfair working conditions. He served 21 years in the U.S. Army, including combat stints, other overseas deployment and posts in the White House,
Roger Wicker is the Republican incumbent senator. He resides in Tupelo and has served in the U.S. Senate since late 2007 after first being appointed to fill a vacancy by then-Gov. Haley Barbour. He was elected to the post in 2008. He previously served in the U.S. House and as a state senator. He is an attorney and served in the United States Air Force.

House District 1

Dianne Black is the Democratic nominee. She is a small business owner in Olive Branch in DeSoto County.
Trent Kelly is the Republican incumbent. He was elected to the post in a special election in 2015. He previously served as a district attorney and before then as a prosecuting attorney for the city of Tupelo. He is a major general in the Mississippi Army National Guard.

House District 2

Bennie Thompson is the Democratic incumbent. He was first elected to the post in 1993. Before then, he served as a Hinds County supervisor and as alderman and then as mayor of Bolton.
Ronald Eller is the Republican nominee. He grew up in West Virginia and moved to central Mississippi after retiring from the military. He is a physician assistant and business owner.

House District 3

Michael Guest is the Republican incumbent and is unopposed.

House District 4

Mike Ezell is the Republican incumbent first being elected in 2022. He previously served as Jackson County sheriff.
Craig Raybon is the Democratic nominee. Raybon is from Gulfport and began a nonprofit “focused on helping out the community as a whole.”

Central District Supreme Court

Jenifer Branning currently serves as a member of the state Senate from Neshoba County.
Byron Carter is a Hinds County attorney and previously served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Armis Hawkins.
James Kitchens is the incumbent. He has served on the state’s highest court since 2008.
Ceola James previously served on the Court of Appeals.
Abby Gale Robinson is a Jackson attorney. She previously was a commercial builder.

Southern District Supreme Court

Dawn Beam is the incumbent, having been first appointed in 2016 by then-Gov. Phil Bryant and later winning election to the post. She is a former chancellor for the Hattiesburg area.
David Sullivan is an attorney in Harrison County and has been a municipal judge in D’Iberville since 2019. His father, Michael, previously served on the state Supreme Court.

Northern District Supreme Court seats

Robert Chamberlin of DeSoto County is unopposed.
James Maxwell of Lafayette County is unopposed.

Court of Appeals 5^th District seat

Ian Baker is an assistant district attorney in Harrison County.
Jennifer Schloegel is a Chancery Court judge for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties.
Amy St. Pe is a Municipal Court judge in Gautier.