Prenatal care for poor women may be a casualty of political infighting

by Sophia Paffenroth, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

A lawmaker playing hardball may cost poor pregnant women a policy that would help them receive timely prenatal care – after the program’s implementation was already delayed a year because of administrative hiccups. 

Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, told Mississippi Today he will not be taking up a House bill to fix the issues in the program. He called it “his prerogative as chairman” – despite authoring his own bill last year on the policy and purportedly being a strong proponent.

House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, the author of last year’s bill on presumptive eligibility for pregnant women that passed into law, re-worked the bill this year to match federal guidelines so the program can take effect. It passed the House unanimously Jan. 24 and was transferred to the Senate. 

But now, it may die in the Senate due to political bartering. 

Blackwell added the policy to the Medicaid tech bill, legislation that comes up nearly every year to make technical amendments and updates to laws governing the Division of Medicaid. But Blackwell’s bill contains dozens of items – including special interest items such as mandating that the agency cover a new, $16,000 postpartum depression drug and a sleep apnea device. 

Sage Therapeutics, the Massachusetts-based company that makes the postpartum depression drug, has hired the local lobbying firm the Clearwater Group this year. 

“I don’t believe it’s the best idea (that) something so critical (as pregnancy presumptive eligibility) should be attached to a $7 million laundry list of unrelated lobbyist requests, particularly as our federal government has stated its intent to trim such unnecessary spending,” McGee told Mississippi Today. “The House will continue fighting for the people who don’t have a hired lobbying effort.”

Medical experts say early prenatal care is essential to mitigating bad health outcomes like preterm birth, for which Mississippi leads the nation. 

Should Blackwell’s 186-page technical amendment bill pass, it would cost the Division of Medicaid $6.8 million. In contrast, it was estimated last year that presumptive eligibility would cost just under $600,000. Lawmakers appropriated that amount to the agency last year.

Although Blackwell’s bill passed the full Senate on Feb. 12, another lawmaker also had questions about the costs associated with the bill. 

“It looks to me like we’re covering a lot more than we have in the past, and I think – don’t we have like a $25 million Medicaid deficit?” Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, asked on the floor. 

Blackwell confirmed that the agency is facing a deficit next year.

Blackwell’s bill is now in the hands of the House Medicaid committee, which McGee chairs. 

McGee’s bill – which strictly fixes the issues with pregnancy presumptive eligibility and would allow the Division of Medicaid to continue training providers and allow pregnant women to take advantage of the program – will die if not passed out of Blackwell’s committee by the deadline Tuesday, March 4.

The policy, called Presumptive Eligibility for Pregnant Women, would allow low-income women who became newly-eligible for Medicaid once pregnant to receive immediate prenatal care as soon as they find out they’re pregnant – even if their Medicaid application is still pending. The policy is especially effective in non-expanded states, where the majority of low-income women aren’t eligible for Medicaid until they become pregnant – meaning a lengthy application process can cut well into their pregnancy.

Mississippi is currently one of only three states with neither expansion or presumptive eligibility for pregnant women. 

Family Health Center in Laurel was one of the first clinics to sign up for the program when it was rolled out by the Division of Medicaid last year. Dr. Rashad Ali, an OB and the CEO of the clinic who has made it his mission to serve uninsured and underinsured women, was disappointed to hear that the policy needed to go through the Legislature once again to be amended. 

Now, he worries what will happen if the policy never goes into effect. 

“I think they’re missing out on great opportunities to enhance the wellbeing of pregnant moms in the state of Mississippi,” said Ali. “… We are one of the leading states in terms of maternal mortality. This is one of the things that can help bring us out of the top.”

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

The Mississippi House has once again passed legislation to increase the size of a program that already sends millions in state dollars to private schools.

The House, as it did in 2024, approved legislation on Wednesday sponsored by Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, that would increase the tax credits available through the Children’s Promise Act. Private schools have been receiving money through the law since 2020.

Lamar said the Act shores up nonprofits that provide services such as foster care and special needs, and that demand currently outstrips the amount of tax credits it makes available. In addition to other nonprofits, the statute also makes tax credits to private schools that meet its criteria.

“Right now there is not enough credits for the need,” Lamar said.

Some Democrats and public school advocates said the proposal — along with two other measures the House passed Wednesday bolstering the tax credits available under the Children’s Promise Act — was the latest measure in a flurry of bills introduced this session that would send taxpayer money to private schools.

“If we continue to bolster private schools with public schools’ money, it continues to harm the public school system,” said House Minority Leader Robert Johnson.

Under the Children’s Promise Act, a person or corporation can make a donation to one of the private schools certified by the Department of Revenue and receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for up to 50% of the donor’s state tax liability.

The maximum a private school currently can receive through the program is $405,000 a year.

The program was initiated in 2019 and touted as a mechanism to provide additional money to nonprofits that care for foster children. But a provision to provide tax credits to private schools was tucked into the bill.

Under current law, a total of $9 million a year in tax credit money can be doled out to private schools. HB 1903, which passed Wednesday, would increase that total up to $16 million in 2025, with the potential for more increases in future years.

The legislation does this by increasing the maximum amount of tax credits allocated by the Department of Revenue for the program from $18 million to $40 million in 2027.

“Clearly, Chairman Lamar’s priority is to get public money to private schools,” said Nancy Loome, director of the public education advocacy group The Parents Campaign. “He’s been trying to do this in many different ways, sneaking it into bills and that sort of thing. It is not the priority of the people of Mississippi. They have overwhelmingly made it clear that they oppose tax dollars benefiting private schools,” Loome said.

According to Loome, 100 private schools qualified this year for Children’s Promise Act money on a first-come, first-served basis. The schools have no obligation to provide any accountability on how the taxpayer money is spent, she added.

Under HB 1903, no more than 50% of the allocated tax credits during a calendar year could be directed to schools.

Another bill that passed Wednesday, HB 1902, would redirect some unused state tax credits to the Children’s Promise Act, Lamar said. A third bill that could be used as a vehicle to increase the tax credits, HB 1894, was initially sold by Lamar as a bond bill, to borrow money for capital projects. Lamar inserted language dealing with the tax credits into the bill, but neglected to mention this to the rest of the Ways and Means Committee he chairs before they hurriedly voted to pass it late Tuesday.

All three bills dealing with the Children’s Promise Act passed with large bipartisan majorities on Wednesday, but Johnson and other opponents said all of them should be altered before becoming law.

Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, told Mississippi Today on Thursday that he does not support sending more tax credit money under the Children’s Promise Act to private schools.

In years past, legislators have attempted to amend the law to direct all of the tax credits to benefit organizations that house and serve children in foster care. Lamar was successful in defeating those efforts.

Johnson wants to narrow the criteria used to evaluate which organizations are eligible for the tax credit so that private schools don’t get taxpayer money. He also wants provisions directing the Department of Revenue to collect more data on how the money is spent.

The Department of Revenue is responsible for certifying the private schools that are eligible to receive funds through the Children’s Promise Act. But, according to responses provided by the department, no information is available on how the funds are spent.

In 2024, the department told legislators that it did not know how the funds were used. DOR also did not have updated information on the number of children served through the Children’s Promise Act. Lamar said in 2024 that he would obtain that information, but it was not clear Thursday if he had done that.

The House’s desire to greatly expand the size of the Children’s Promise Act comes against the backdrop of a legislative session where legislative leaders have made school choice, which can entail sending taxpayer money to private schools, a central priority. The primary measure that would have done that died in the House earlier this month.

Bobby Harrison contributed to this report.

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

On “Day 1 of Peace” in Jackson, Mississippi

by Maya Miller, Mississippi Today
February 27, 2025

The first 24 hours of “100 Days of Peace,” an initiative announced by Jackson leadership Wednesday, were marked by a solemn energy and a renewed dedication to making Jackson safer.

In the course of the day, the mayor presented a large ceremonial check to local credible messengers – formerly incarcerated people who work with youth in the juvenile system to interrupt violence – on the steps of City Hall. Separately, kin to gun violence victims from across the state traveled to the capital city to mourn their loved ones outside the state Capitol building and call for gun control policies. Local police patrolled and responded to 911 calls as normal. 

And just as it seemed the day would end without wounds, a man was shot in the knee during a domestic disturbance at a Belhaven apartment complex around 8pm.

100 Days of Peace, also called 100 Days of Action, is a city-wide initiative which aims to find community solutions for crime reduction. The initiative is a partnership with credible messenger programs and will include community listening sessions and town halls, as well as trainings leading up to a Sneaker Ball – a formal gala with informal footwear – to celebrate the work in June.

Benny Ivey, co-founder of Strong Arms of Mississippi Credible Messenger Program, said that he hopes to use his past as an incarcerated person and a former gang leader to mentor younger people who cycle in and out of juvenile detention. Strong Arms of Mississippi received one of three $50,000 grants Wednesday to build up the program’s capacity.

The organization’s motto is “rebuilding communities we once helped to destroy.” Credible messengers are people who have lived experience in the communities that they’re trying to reach.

“Our mentorship program is about building those relationships so that they will listen to what you have to say, because you’re listening to what they have to say,” said Ivey. “We’ve learned that these young men will open up to us about things that they won’t tell anybody, and that’s the first step in changing the mindset.”

Fredrick Womack, Executive Director of Operation Good, which also received one of the grants, said that unity within the community takes a village. He points to helping mothers in the community and getting people who are willing to work into job development courses at Hinds Community College to learn a trade. 

“We’re here to do what’s necessary to heal the problem,” he said. “Not just be a bandaid.”

With the funds provided by the city, Womack hopes to host more community events and block parties to engage at-risk youth. He also said that crime prevention alleviates the strain on city resources used to investigate and prosecute crimes after they happen. 

“I’m glad the city took on this effort in the reduction of crime on the community level,” Womack said. “Each murder that we prevent in Jackson, it prevents the cost of upwards of a million dollars to the city.”

The third organization awarded a grant is Living with Purpose, established in Byram last year by longtime peer counselor John Knight.

The funds come from the city’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, launched in 2022 with a $700,000 grant from the National League of Cities and Wells Fargo Bank. The office is staffed by director Keisha Coleman and community outreach specialist Kuwasi Omari and operates largely as an umbrella, coordinating support for the three grantees who have been conducting youth mentorship and violence intervention on the ground for years.

“We want to be very clear, this 100 Days of Action and 100 Days of Peace is not geared toward what we call the ‘bubble kids’, the kids who are out here that are straddling the fence. It’s geared towards those youth and those communities that are at the highest risk,” Coleman said. “So yes, we are engaging gang members, we are engaging cliques, we are engaging affiliates, we are engaging anyone who’s at high risk of shooting a gun or being shot.”

At the press conference, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba said he has witnessed the credible messengers passing out food in under-resourced communities. When the water crisis peaked in 2022, the mayor said those men were some of the first who entered the frontlines to deliver drinking water to Jacksonians. Research has shown that hunger can be associated with increased risk of experiencing or perpetrating violence.

“I’ve seen statistics in a limited block radius where they’ve had nearly half of a year with no gun violence within one of the areas that had some of the most pronounced gun violence prior to their work,” Lumumba said at the press conference.

The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery did not supply reports or data on the success of the programs when asked, but Coleman directed Mississippi Today to the individual organizations’ websites. Operation Good’s website claims that while using its own crime intervention model, the organization saw a decrease in violent crimes, from 87 percent to 14 percent over a 3-year period, in the area it had a presence. But “due to the majority of our members being ex-con they started to fade away,” the website states, and in their absence, Jackson’s murder rate began consistently rising, peaking in 2021.

Starting in 2021 under a new national model called the Cure Violence approach, Operation Good reports that it ushered in a 286-day period without gun-related deaths in its first year.

In other cities that have declared periods of nonviolence, leaders have made specific calls to action. For many years in Birmingham, the city council has asked high schoolers to take a 100-day pledge to avoid violent situations, according to local reports. In Memphis, the mayor has successfully asked opposing gang leaders for a 7-day ceasefire in the city, CNN reported. In exchange, the gangs asked for access to well-paying jobs and training to secure those jobs.

“They need money in their pockets. That’s the way you can change it,” Memphis Mayor Paul Young said in 2024, the local news station reported.

During the 100 Days of Action, the city of Jackson said it will partner with the crime-invention groups to host job fairs.

“The reality is while they (JPD) are solving crime, crime is still taking place. You can’t arrest yourself out of the problem. If you arrest somebody at 5 o’clock and you have done nothing to affect the conditions that led them out there in the first place, then they will be there at 6 o’clock,” Lumumba said standing outside of City Hall Wednesday morning.

Later in the afternoon, half a mile away on the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol, dozens gathered from across the state for a day of mourning as part of the National Victims of Gun Violence Day, demonstrating that gun violence is a widespread problem for Mississippi, not just Jackson. 

Data shows that Mississippi has the highest rate of annual gun deaths at nearly 30 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Jacqueline Alexander of Woodville, Mississippi, said she lost her nephew in a shooting nine months ago. For her, the wound is still fresh.

“I was bitter. I was angry. I was more hurt than anything,” she said through tears. “My nephew was a vital part of my life, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. People don’t understand, during the funeral times, you have all the love shown, but what do you do after the funeral is over?”

Alexander criticized her local government, saying that there should have been a call to action to solve his murder, and four other unsolved murders in their small town.

“Nobody deserves to be gunned down. A 15 year old child – there should have been a call to order,” she said. “The town should have been on fire.”

Angenel Washington of Natchez, whose daughter was killed in 2020, said she hopes that city and state leaders will use their platforms to push for more policing.

“I’m hoping that leaders will see that this is something that is out of control, and they understand that if they don’t do anything or don’t talk about it, they give consent that they’re OK with it,” Washington said. “… My daughter was willing to fight to help others, so they need to take their job seriously and get to the problem at hand.”

Mississippi Impact Coalition, along with partners The People’s Advocacy Institute, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, One Voice and The Sweet Spot of Jackson, came together to demand the Mississippi Legislature pass universal background checks. They also want to repeal open carry, and add restrictions to assault weapons and mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. No such measures have been advanced by state leaders this session.

“This isn’t just about laws. It’s about lives. It’s about justice. It’s about breaking cycles of trauma and building a future where our communities thrive instead of mourn,” said Danyelle Holmes of the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign.

Mississippi ranks 49th in the country for gun law strength, with no foundational laws in place such as one requiring a concealed carry permit or no carry laws after a violent offense.

Mayor Lumumba said that the 100 Days initiative primarily focuses on interrupting violence before JPD is ever called. JPD employees, the mayor said, have unreasonably been expected to play a dual role of detective and psychiatrist.

“By the time the police have arrived, it has already gone wrong,” Lumumba said in his announcement.

Reached hours after the city’s press conference, Jackson Police Department Chief Joseph Wade said he was not aware of the “100 Days” initiative, though he later met with city leaders to discuss the community-led efforts.

“I’m for this initiative. I fully support it. I am about saving lives in the city of Jackson. I talk about it. I’m transparent to the community,” Wade said, adding that he and his commanders are hosting a public event at Christ United church in north Jackson Thursday afternoon to discuss patterns and strategies in addressing crime. “I just need to know, like, what do the components look like?”

After meeting with city officials Wednesday, Wade explained that the initiative is community-led – JPD does not play a formal role – but that the department will offer whatever educational support is requested.

Day 1 of Peace was an otherwise typical day for the city’s police force, JPD public information officer Tommie Brown said – squad cars patrolling, officers responding to calls and detectives working investigations. By 5pm, Wade said there had not been a homicide in the city and he was unaware of any shooting reports. 

The state-run Capitol Police force did not receive any violent crime reports by late Wednesday afternoon, Mississippi Department of Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin told Mississippi Today, but in the evening it responded to a gunshot victim at Pagoda Village Apartments on Jefferson Street in Belhaven. Martin said the shooting was the result of a domestic disturbance and officers arrested a 30-year-old at the scene for aggravated assault.

Just after midnight, JPD responded to the shooting death of a 22-year-old Memphis woman at Studio 6 hotel in north Jackson. And Thursday morning, a 15-year-old boy who had been reported as a runaway was found deceased in south Jackson from a gunshot wound to the head, according to a briefing by Wade. Officers are searching for suspects in both cases.

So far in 2025, JPD has investigated 11 homicides. This includes two shooting deaths in south Jackson over the past weekend, a woman accused of killing her husband and a teenager charged with killing his grandmother. 

“Every single one were about people that knew each other – interpersonal conflicts, domestic violence situations. And we have a 100% solvability rate,” Wade said Wednesday, before the next two homicides occurred. “Domestic violence situations that happen inside homes, or conflicts dealing with individuals who do not know how to mitigate conflict. So we really need help inside homes, inside residences.”

Capitol Police, which responds to incidents in a central area of the city spanning from south of downtown to north of the Fondren neighborhood, have worked 3 homicides this year for a total of 14 killings in the capital city. This is down from 15 homicides this time last year and 21 in 2021, the year with the highest recorded homicides, according to WLBT.

“Data shows us that even though crime and gun violence is high in Jackson, it’s a small percentage of people that’s committing the violence, and so we are going to target that small population of people who are actually toting the guns and being on the other side of the gun and try to get them into these mentorship programs,” Coleman said.

Coleman told Mississippi Today that the data she referenced was provided by JPD’s data analyst, but the information doesn’t exist in a formal, sharable report because the office “is still developing a dashboard to synthesize the variables to support the raw data.” Later in the spring, though, the office plans to publish a community landscape assessment. Mississippi Today submitted a public records request for the office’s data and expenditures.

Jackson Editor Anna Wolfe contributed to this report.

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