Former U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo will pay $30,000 to settle with the Federal Election Commission, which found he used campaign money for personal expenses.

Palazzo, a certified public accountant and former state legislator who lost his congressional reelection bid in 2023 to now U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell, faced ethics and campaign finance scrutiny for several years while in office.

The FEC found he paid $3,000 a month from his campaign to a company he owned for rent of a river house in D’Iberville he alleged was a campaign office despite “almost no campaign activity” being done there, a report said. In his settlement with the FEC, he agreed to pay a civil penalty of $13,500 and cover outstanding campaign debt of $16,500. The FEC noted Palazzo had already reimbursed his campaign $23,000 for personal use of a vehicle the campaign leased.

The FEC investigated Palazzo after Republican primary opponent Carl Boyanton filed a complaint.

Palazzo, who held the District 4 Mississippi U.S. House Seat from 2011 to 2023, also faced probes by the Office of Congressional Ethics and the House Ethics Committee. The OCE, in a 2021 report, claimed that Palazzo misspent campaign and congressional funds and said it found evidence he used his office to help his brother and used staff for personal errands and services. After its investigation, the OCE handed the matter off to the House Ethics Committee.

But the House Ethics Committee, after a year-and-a-half long probe, did not take any action on the issue and let the matter drop when a new Congress took office.

READ MORE: Rep. Steven Palazzo ethics investigation: Is the congressman’s campaign account a slush fund?

The allegations in the OCE report included that Palazzo used campaign funds to pay himself and his erstwhile wife nearly $200,000 through companies they own, including thousands to cover the mortgage, maintenance and upgrades to a riverfront home Palazzo owned and wanted to sell. But Palazzo said that the payments were legally made for the campaign’s rent of the home for a campaign office.

A Mississippi Today investigation in 2020 also questioned thousands of dollars in Palazzo campaign spending on swanky restaurants, sporting events, resort hotels, golfing and gifts. Federal law and House rules prohibit using campaign money for personal expenses. The Palazzo campaign at the time said it had found a few mistaken, non-permissible purchases and the Palazzo had repaid the campaign.

READ MORE: Ethics complaints against Rep. Steven Palazzo likely to ‘evaporate’ in Congress

The OCE report also claimed Palazzo had used congressional staffers for personal errands and campaign work. It said former staffers it interviewed said Palazzo’s office failed to separate official work from campaign and personal activities, including shopping for his kids. In 2011, during his first term in office, Palazzo had also faced allegations that he and his wife used congressional staffers for babysitting, chauffeuring kids around and moving.

Palazzo on Tuesday responded with written statements about the case.

“It’s not the complete exoneration we had hoped for, but I’ll take it,” Palazzo said. “My family, friends, and loyal supporters have endured 5 years of lies and half-truths created by my 2020 political opponents. They couldn’t beat me at the ballot box, so they had to resort to malicious allegations and distortions. They may have taken the seat from me, but they cannot take 12 years of successful service for our military, veterans, and families in South Mississippi. I delivered on my promise to make Mississippi stronger and more prosperous for future generations, and I’m glad President Trump is continuing what we started in 2011.”

Palazzo said: “At no time were campaign funds converted to personal income. All expenditures were approved by my campaign treasurer for ordinary and necessary campaign expenditures … “$13,500 is not a hefty fine, but it is a lot of money to me. To see this finally resolved and to be fined for technical violations is a huge win. The other money will pay off some outstanding campaign debt which is normal for all campaigns.”

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

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday morning threw cold water on a Senate plan to trim state taxes because the proposal does not fully eliminate the state’s individual income tax, injecting more tension in an already contentious debate at the Capitol. 

“It doesn’t get anywhere near eliminating the income tax so it is a non-starter for me!” Reeves wrote on X. “I’m beginning to believe that there is someone in the Senate that is philosophically opposed to eliminating the income tax.” 

If the House and Senate cannot agree on a plan to eliminate the income tax, Reeves could force lawmakers into a special session to debate the issue again and use his bully pulpit to try to sway public opinion. 

Though they haven’t introduced actual legislation, Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders unveiled a net $326 million tax cut plan last week that reduces the state income tax and the sales tax on groceries and raises the gasoline tax to fund road work. 

Hosemann and Senate leaders described the plan as a “measured, careful, cautious and responsible” way to deliver tax cuts. 

The House, on the other hand, passed a more sweeping $1.1 billion net tax cut plan that eliminates the income tax over a decade, cuts the state grocery tax and raises sales taxes and gasoline taxes.

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today that House leadership likely wouldn’t dig its heels in on one particular component of its tax cut plan. Still, the speaker wants a final agreement with the Senate that puts the state on a “path to total elimination over a reasonable and doable amount of time.” 

“I would say we don’t have a hard line on anything, but I’m not interested in doing some small piece of a tax cut while not addressing our other issues that nobody disagrees are plaguing us right now,” White said. 

A similar debate raged during the 2022 session when former House Speaker Philip Gunn pushed the Senate to eliminate the income tax, but Hosemann, at the time, pushed for more austere tax cuts that didn’t abolish the tax. 

While the two legislative leaders were deadlocked, Reeves called a press conference late in the session and urged Hosemann and Gunn to adopt a compromise plan to eliminate the tax over a period of time.

The two leaders ended up agreeing on a plan that made drastic cuts to the income tax but didn’t entirely do away with it. Reeves ended up signing the measure into law.

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

Note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a new platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here. 

Like many women in the workforce, my wife faced a gut-wrenching choice: whether to tell her boss she was pregnant. 

A postdoctoral researcher in science at a major university in the northern United States, she summoned the courage and was told that if she requested parental leave, her employment would end. She had our child and continued. She never filed a complaint.

Like many postdocs, my wife depended on her supervisor to advance in her career and feared the risks in speaking up.

This was about 10 years ago. Yet her situation is hardly unique, particularly for women in academia.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world where federal law does not give workers paid time off for parental leave.

Across the U.S., at least 13 states and the District of Columbia have instated mandatory paid family leave policies. Nine more have a voluntary version. A growing number of colleges and university systems offer it, as well.

Even in our region, schools like the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Clemson and South Carolina have begun offering paid parental leave to some faculty and employees, as have the University of Louisiana and the Tennessee System, among others.

Although our state, Mississippi, does not yet offer paid parental leave to state employees, a broad coalition has sprung up among those seeking its implementation. 

On Jan. 31, the Mississippi House unanimously approved a bill authored by Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, that would give state employees eight weeks of paid maternity leave. Speaker of the House Jason White and Attorney General Lynn Fitch have publicly backed the policy as part of a pro-life agenda. The Senate recently passed a similar bill, authored by Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs. Now the House and Senate must agree on the same bill.

Whether Republicans nationally will embrace these efforts, especially under President Trump, remains to be seen. Neither he nor Kamala Harris campaigned extensively around paid family leave. Yet during his first administration, Trump became the first Republican to call for family leave in his State of the Union Address. He also approved a defense bill guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid parental leave to the nation’s two million federal employees.

Parental leave policies are popular across the political spectrum. Although polling data in Mississippi is limited, one national poll last year found that 76% of Americans support a national paid family and medical leave program, including 90% of Democrats, 71% of independents and 62% of Republicans.

Another poll, commissioned ahead of the 2024 U.S. Elections by an advocacy group called Paid Leave for All, found that 85% of voters in battleground states favor paid parental, family and medical leave, including 76% of Republican voters.

Attorney General Fitch said  in January that “it is certainly time to have paid maternity leave in the state of Mississippi for our state employees,” adding: “I think it’s so important to say to our women again, we’d like for you to be here. That helps us with our retention and our recruitment for women in state government.”

Recognizing these needs, especially at universities in Mississippi, the United Faculty Senates Association of Mississippi, a group representing the faculty senates of the state’s public universities, has launched a petition requesting 12 weeks of paid parental leave for the universities’ employees. 

The petition follows a parental leave proposal that was drafted and approved by the faculty senate of each university and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Drawing on the World Health Organization, which recommends at least 18 weeks of paid leave for new mothers, the proposal has garnered the support of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable and the American Health Association, among others.

Some ask why existing policies, such as the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), aren’t sufficient, or why men should be eligible.

While helpful for some, FMLA leave is unpaid and thus unaffordable for a lot of working parents, especially in Mississippi, which confronts the lowest median household income of any state in the U.S. Many parents, especially early-career academics, also fail to qualify for FMLA upon giving birth, since they have not accrued enough time with their employers. 

Although universities like mine, Southern Miss, often go out of their way to try to accommodate new parents, there are limits to that flexibility, and one can’t depend on supervisors to make allowances. Moreover, while most caregivers for newborns are women, a growing number aren’t, and parents need the flexibility of choosing which parent will go on leave. 

Others ask where the money for paid parental leave will come from in Mississippi. Although state coffers are likely to shrink as pandemic relief funds dry up and the economy cools, Mississippi enjoys a reported $700 million in state surplus funds, which some lawmakers have invoked in proposing to eliminate the state income tax. Perhaps the deeper pro-life investment, however, would be in a policy of paid parental leave.

After all, parental leave prioritizes the health of newborns. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that after New York state implemented mandatory paid family leave, hospitals witnessed an18% drop in respiratory infection cases among infants. Another study found that paid family leave helps reduce child abuse. The findings join a growing chorus of research linking paid family leave policies to improved infant health.

Children in Mississippi, which is the state with the highest infant mortality and pre-term birth rates in the U.S., would likely benefit the most from these changes.

My wife was fortunate. Another supervisor took her under her wing and fostered her career. I was also lucky in that my university allowed me the flexibility to have time with our child.

But too many parents, especially women, have had to choose between nurturing their careers and their newborns.

If politicians are serious about protecting life and families, they can affirm that commitment by implementing paid parental leave policies.

After all, everyone deserves the chance to spend a little time with their kids.

Joshua Bernstein is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi and president of the United Faculty Senates Association of Mississippi. The views expressed here are his own. In his free time, he enjoys playing with and coaching his three children in soccer, baseball and tennis, though he hasn’t warmed to pickleball yet.

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