Mississippi Today

State leaders still won’t fix scandalous welfare program that serves few poor families

Published

2 years ago

February 17, 2023

State leaders still won’t fix scandalous welfare program that serves few poor families

by Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today
February 17, 2023

Now that Mississippi’s welfare department isn’t hemorrhaging federal grant funds as a result of widespread mismanagement and political corruption, it has over $100 million to spare.

But the agency, Mississippi Department of Human Services, won’t say what it’s going to do with the money; whether it’s going to try to reach more needy families; or how it’s going to finally start tracking outcomes of the program.

In the three years following arrests in the largest public fraud scandal in state history, the agency led by Gov. Tate Reeves has never released a full accounting of its current welfare expenditures. There isn’t even a list of organizations receiving the funding on the agency’s website, nor are its subgrant agreements available online.

And lawmakers, in their seventh week of the Legislative session, haven’t taken one action to address the logjam. Instead, they’ve killed at least 11 bills aimed at improving the administration of the agency and its funds, as well as at least five amendments offered to do the same on the floors of both chambers.

All the bills filed to address these problems were killed by Republican committee chairs without debate, and all the amendments were introduced by Democrats and voted down by Republicans, primarily along party lines.

“(Mississippi Department of Human Services) has certainly not held up to its mission or its responsibility to those who need it the most,” said Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Jones, who offered an amendment to the MDHS appropriations bill on Wednesday to make increases to the agency’s budget, which Republicans reduced. “I do hate that through the general bills process that there was no legislation for a board, or no legislation for any of these audits that are in this appropriations bill, that we got any reports or any demands or anything like that. That has not been before us, and I imagine won’t be before us, but let me say to you that there are areas over there in Human Services that need some escalation.”

While Republican leadership says it has cleaned up fraud within the agency, that doesn’t mean the welfare program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, is reaching the needy or helping people enter the workforce. In fact, during the height of the scandal, the state was using more of its TANF funds to help more poor Mississippians than it is today.

In 2022, a monthly average of 246 adults and 2,265 children benefited from the welfare check — no more than $260 for a family of three (a rate that was raised in 2021 for the first time since 1999). Mississippi is consistently among the most impoverished states in the nation with 1-in-5 of its residents living below the poverty line. The assistance is reaching about 4% of the more than half-a-million Mississippians living in poverty.

Meanwhile, the state continues to rack up tens of millions in welfare funds. By October of 2021, more than a year ago, Mississippi’s TANF program had amassed $97.9 million in unobligated funds. While the agency hasn’t released data showing how they spent the money within the last year, all indications are that the number of unspent TANF funds has only grown, especially since the state didn’t issue a single new TANF subgrant in 2022.

In October, MDHS Director Bob Anderson hesitated to say how his agency might spend the money, or whether it would use the funds to, for example, increase the number of child care vouchers it is able to provide to low-income families.

“Understand, people have a lot of other plans for that money as well,” Anderson said.

MDHS has refused to answer Mississippi Today’s questions about which people and what plans.

The sections of the TANF program that have received most public attention are:

Cash assistance — the money that goes out directly to families who qualify for the welfare check
Subgrants — the money that goes to organizations to provide TANF-related services, such as after school programs, parenting classes and workforce training

But these currently account for less than half of the state’s annual federal TANF grant.

And according to the state’s checkbook, the state spends millions of TANF funds each year on items outside of cash assistance or TANF subgrants — such as IT contracts, a contract with the company who conducts drug testing of welfare applicants, interagency transfers to the state auditor’s office or payments to the attorneys crafting the civil case against NFL legend Brett Favre and others. There has not been a public accounting of these purchases, nor have they been discussed in audits, legislative hearings or among lawmakers publicly.

Each year, the state also transfers a large chunk of TANF funds, the amount unknown to the public, to Mississippi Child Protection Services, the embattled state agency responsible for investigating child abuse and neglect and overseeing foster care across the state. The financial maneuver is preventing the state from taking advantage of unprecedented federal matching funds offered under the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act to help families stay intact.

Aside from the scandalous stories about politicians and famous athletes funneling TANF money to their pet projects during former Gov. Phil Bryant’s administration, the welfare program itself is as forgotten and ignored as it was before the arrests.

Lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 to place law enforcement officers within MDHS’s Fraud Investigation Unit and a bill in 2022 to require that employees of the unit report civil or criminal violations to the state auditor’s office.

Neither of these changed how the agency runs its TANF grant or introduced any accountability for the agency to spend the money effectively.

In 2021, the first full year after the scandal was revealed, Mississippi spent just $35.6 million of the $86.5 million it receives in federal funds each year, according to federal reports released in December. The reports are typically outdated by about a year.

To put that into perspective: In 2018, Mississippi spent about $113 million in federal TANF funds (including some unspent funds from years before). If $50 million of that went to fraudulent or unallowed purchases, that leaves $63 million that Mississippi spent legally that year, including to organizations similar to those providing services today.

In 2018, at the height of the fraud scandal, the state pumped $7.3 million directly to families, whereas it only gave $3.5 million in cash assistance in 2021. Either way you slice it, Mississippi’s welfare department was using more TANF money to help more poor Mississippians during the years of Bryant’s appointed former MDHS Director John Davis, who is likely going to prison, than the agency is today under Reeves and Anderson.

Mississippi Department of Human Services previously told the public that it is allocating about $69 million of its TANF funds each year — $4.1 million on cash assistance, $34.5 million on subgrants to organizations and $30 million to plug budget holes at the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services.

But it has not made documentation of these expenditures available to the public. Also, these figures are not clearly reflected in federal reports. In 2021, for example, the state only reported spending $15 million in TANF funds on “child welfare” – the only spending category that would appear to correspond with the CPS transfers.

The agency would not explain the reason for the discrepancies in the federal reporting, other than to say that it’s possible not all of the money that the state obligated was actually used. The department has also repeatedly failed to explain which purchases fall under which categories in the federal reports.

The state is allowed to use grant funds from one year to another for a period of three years. So funds being spent today could technically be coming from the state’s 2021 TANF grant. That, and the fact that some subgrants span more than one year, during which the subgrantee can draw the funds at their leisure, have perpetually created a foggy picture of the program.

The only documentation of TANF expenditures that MDHS appears to have made public, at the request of Mississippi Today, is a list of subgrantees to whom the state awards a fraction of the funds. This information does not appear on the agency’s website, nor in its annual report.

In mid-2020, the department provided to Mississippi Today a spreadsheet of TANF purchases that included, in addition to payments to subgrantees, expenditures for things like tech support or hotels for employee training. In October, Mississippi Today extracted and analyzed all purchases labeled under the TANF program from the state’s accounting database from 2015 to 2022, all of which Mississippi Today made publicly available, but the expenditures didn’t add up to nearly the amount the state reported spending to the federal government. Transfers from MDHS to CPS also do not appear on the state’s accounting database.

The department began the most recent Request for Proposals — a competitive bid process — for TANF subgrants in June of 2022. But due to staff changes within MDHS’s Division of Workforce Development and Partnership Management, a spokesperson said, the agency has not made an award.

“Once we have a finalized plan we will make a public announcement,” MDHS Chief Communication Officer Mark Jones offered in response to questions about the agency’s plan for the TANF program moving forward.

Even with the grants most recently awarded in 2021, it’s unclear what all of the organizations are accomplishing or how the programs align with a vision to reduce poverty. The current grants cover parenting initiatives ($8.1 million), after school programs ($13.7 million), and workforce development ($14.9 million). The subgrant agreements aren’t even available on Mississippi’s transparency website.

The largest award was a $6.9 million parenting initiative grant to Mississippi Children’s Home Society, or Canopy Solutions, a children’s behavioral health services provider, including a residential psychiatric facility. Canopy has been a TANF subgrantee for years and works within the foster care system to prevent family separations. Canopy also recently launched a specialized nonprofit school for students with learning differences in Ridgeland, essentially replacing the recently shuttered New Summit School by hiring its employees and recruiting its students.

New Summit closed after its founder Nancy New was charged within the welfare scandal. New was funneling TANF money to New Summit, a for-profit school, and also running a separate scam to defraud the Mississippi Department of Education, she admitted in her 2022 guilty pleas.

Other current TANF subgrantees include the Mississippi Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs ($5.3 million), Save the Children Federation ($2.4 million), YMCA Metro Jackson ($1 million), and Juanita Sims Doty Foundation ($1 million) for afterschool programs; and Institutions of Higher Learning ($2.4 million), Mississippi Department of Employment Security ($1.5 million), South Delta Planning and Development District ($2.1 million), Southern MS Planning and Development District Gulfport ($3.6 million), Three Rivers Planning & Development District ($4.7 million) for workforce training.

Since welfare reform in the late 1990s, state leaders, workforce specialists, industry experts and advocates have met, studied, and discussed ad nauseam the barriers they’ve identified for families escaping poverty – chief among them child care, transportation and workforce training that aligns with market needs. The concept of TANF when Congress created it was to move people into the workforce, hopefully ending the reliance on government assistance.

Mississippi could be transferring up to 30% of its TANF funding to supplement the Child Care Development Block Grant, which provides child care vouchers to low-income working parents. The program has always served just a small fraction of low-income children needing child care across the state.

While legislation is not required for MDHS to make this transfer – since it has done so in the past, according to federal reports – the current Legislature has killed bills and amendments to compel MDHS to use TANF funds this way. And the agency refuses to answer questions about whether it will or, if not, why it won’t. The agency has, however, complained that without a budget supplement, 12,000 kids may be kicked off the voucher.

“From the beginning of the (TANF) program, there have been thoughts like, ‘We need to figure out a way to provide daycare. We need to figure out a way to provide transportation and that will help get a large number of people back into the workforce,’ which is said to be the aim of all these reforms,” Senate Public Health Committee Chair Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said during a floor debate on several TANF-related amendments last week. “And it is extremely frustrating that we have money that could be used for additional vouchers for childcare, so that there would be someone to care for children when their parent is at work and we’re not taking advantage of that. And yet we complain about people not working.”

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

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Mississippi Stories Videos

Mississippi Stories: Michael May of Lazy Acres

Published

16 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – rlake – 2025-01-21 14:51:00

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show. It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.

For more videos, subscribe to Mississippi Today’s YouTube channel.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1921

Published

24 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-21 07:00:00

Jan. 21, 1921

George Washington Carver Credit: Wikipedia

George Washington Carver became one of the first Black experts to testify before Congress.

His unlikely road to Washington began after his birth in Missouri, just before the Civil War ended. When he was a week old, he and his mother and his sister were kidnapped by night raiders. The slaveholder hired a man to track them down, but the only one the man could locate was George, and the slaveholder exchanged a race horse for George’s safe return. George and his brother were raised by the slaveholder and his wife.

The couple taught them to read and write. George wound up attending a school for Black children 10 miles away and later tried to attend Highland University in Kansas, only to get turned away because of the color of his skin. Then he attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before becoming the first Black student at what is now Iowa State University, where he received a Master’s of Science degree and became the first Black faculty member.

Booker T. Washington then invited Carver to head the Tuskegee Institute’s Agriculture Department, where he found new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops.

In the past, segregation would have barred Carver’s testimony before Congress, but white peanut farmers, desperate to convince lawmakers about the need for a tariff on peanuts because of cheap Chinese imports, believed Carver could captivate them — and captivate he did, detailing how the nut could be transformed into candy, milk, livestock feed, even ink.

“I have just begun with the peanut,” he told lawmakers.

Impressed, they passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922.

In addition to this work, Carver promoted racial harmony. From 1923 to 1933, he traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Time magazine referred to him as a “Black Leonardo,” and he died in 1943.

That same year, the George Washington Carver Monument complex, the first national park honoring a Black American, was founded in Joplin, Missouri.

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

Mississippi Today

Legislative recap: 2025 tax cut battle has been joined

Published

2 days ago

January 20, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Geoff Pender – 2025-01-20 12:00:00

After relatively brief debate and questioning given its magnitude, the state House passed the first meaningful legislation of the new session: House Bill 1, a measure that would eliminate the state income tax, trim taxes on non-prepared food and raise sales and gasoline taxes.

It would mark a sea change in state tax structure, a shift from income to consumption taxation.

“We are at a place where we can finally tell the hard-working people of Mississippi we can eliminate the tax on work,” House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, HB1’s author, told his colleagues.

The measure passed the House 88-24. It gained some Democratic support in the supermajority Republican House, with nine Democrats voting in favor, 24 against and 12 voting present.

The proposal garnered some bipartisan support because it includes at least a couple of items Democratic lawmakers have championed in the past: A gasoline tax to help fix crumbling roadways, and a reduction in the “grocery” tax, or the sales tax levied on unprepared food, of which Mississippi has the highest overall rate in the nation.

It still met with some Democratic opposition in part because it is a sea change toward more “regressive” taxation. Proponents say this is just, people should pay more for state services they use, such as roadways, and for things they buy as opposed to taxing income. Opponents say this places a proportionately higher tax burden on people of modest means.

“I would say the people hurt the most with this would be working people who have to put gas in their car to go to work or those who have to purchase materials to do a job,” House Democratic Leader Robert Johnson said.

Beyond that concern, opponents or skeptics worry that the foundation of the proposed tax overhaul would be built on shifting sands — a state economy that has been so rosy primarily from the federal government dumping billions of dollars in pandemic spending into Mississippi. With the federal spigot being cut off, some worry, the state economy could slump, and the massive tax cuts in this new plan could provide a state budget crisis, of which Mississippi has much experience, and underfunding of crucial services such as schools, roads, health care and law enforcement.

The largest hurdle Republican House leaders face in seeing their tax plan through to law is not in garnering bipartisan support. It’s internecine disagreement with the Senate Republican leadership, which still appears to harbor abovementioned concerns about overhauling tax structure in uncertain economic times and betting on growth to cover massive tax cuts.

Senate leaders have said they want to enact more tax cuts, but their plan has not yet been released. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has provided some details of what he wants to see, but it would appear he wants a more cautious approach on cuts. He has not publicly opined on the tax increases in the House plan.

Quote of the Week

“Have you ever worn a belt and suspenders, lady? It’s a belt and suspenders approach.” — Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, to Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, during floor debate on Lamar’s bill to eliminate the state income tax and raise other taxes.

“No. I have not worn a belt and suspenders. I don’t know anyone who has worn a belt and suspenders,” Scott replied.

In Brief

House will renew push to legalize mobile sports betting

House Gaming Committee Chairman Casey Eure, R-Saucier, told Mississippi Today he plans on taking another crack at legalizing mobile sports betting in the state. In 2024, the House and Senate passed versions of legislation to permit online sports betting, but never agreed on a final proposal. Some lawmakers raised concerns that gambling platforms would have no incentive to partner with smaller casinos, and most of the money would instead flow to the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s already bustling casinos. Proponents say legalization would undercut the influence of illicit offshore sports betting platforms.

“I’ve been working on this bill for many years and I’m just trying to satisfy any concerns that the Senate may have so we can pass this and start collecting the tax dollars that the state deserves and not allowing everyone to place bets with these offshore accounts,” Eure said. “I feel like the state is losing between $40-$80 million a year in tax revenue.”

Sports wagering has been permitted in the state for years, but online betting has remained illegal amid fears the move could harm the bottom line of the state’s brick-and-mortar casinos. Mobile sports betting is legal in 30 states and Washington, D.C., according to the American Gaming Association. — Michael Goldberg

Hosemann makes Senate committee chair changes

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann last week named new chairmen of committees, after former state Sen. Jenifer Branning was sworn into office as a new justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Sen. Chuck Younger, a Republican from Columbus, previously led the Senate Agriculture Committee and will replace Branning as chairman of the Transportation Committee. Sen. Neil Whaley, a Republican from Potts Camp, previously led the Senate Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Committee, but will now lead the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Here are the other changes to Senate committees:

Sen. Ben Suber, a Republican from Bruce, will be the new chairman of the Senate Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Committee

Sen. Bart Williams, a Republican from Starkville, is the new chairman of the Senate Public Property Committee

Sen. Scott DeLano, a Republican from Gulfport, will lead the Senate Technology Committee

Sen. Robin Robinson, a Republican from Laurel, will chair the Senate Labor Committee

Sen. Angela Turner Ford, a Democrat from West Point, will lead the Senate Drug Policy Committee. — Taylor Vance

What’s in a name? Democratic Rep. Scott hopes GOP majority will pass ‘Donald J. Trump Act’ bills

Perhaps tired of seeing many measures she authors ignored or shot down in flames by the Republican supermajority in the Mississippi Legislature, Democratic Rep. Omeria Scott of Laurel is trying a new strategy: naming bills after Republican President-elect Trump.

For this session, Scott has authored: House Bill 61, the “Donald J. Trump Voting Rights Restoration Act;” House Bill 62, the “Donald J. Trump Ban-The-Box Act … to prohibit public employers from using criminal history as a bar to employment;” and House Bill 249, the “Donald J. Trump Early Voting Act.” — Geoff Pender

More bills filed to criminalize abortion

Since the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, Mississippi lawmakers have proposed bills to criminalize workarounds to the state’s strict abortion ban – including criminalizing the abortion pill and out-of-state abortions. The 2025 legislative session is no exception.

Rep. William Tracy Arnold, R-Booneville, filed House Bill 616 that would make it a felony to manufacture or make accessible medication abortion. Anyone convicted of the crime would be subject to a fine between $1,000 and $5,000, as well as imprisonment between two and five years. Last year, about 250 Mississippians each month requested medication abortion from Aid Access, the only online telemedicine service supplying medication abortion via mail in the U.S.

Helping a minor receive an abortion would also be criminalized under House Bill 148 filed by Rep. Mark Tullos, R-Raleigh. That would include transporting a minor out of state to undergo an abortion, as well as helping a minor procure a medication abortion – both of which would be punishable by not less than 20 years in prison or a fine of not less than $50,000. — Sophia Paffenroth

By the Numbers

$1.1 billion

The estimated net annual cost of the House plan to eliminate the state income tax and raise sales taxes, once fully phased in. Proponents say economic growth would allow the state budget, currently about $7 billion a year, to absorb the cut. Eliminating the income tax would cost the state $2.2 billion in revenue, but the House plan would raise about $1.1 billion in other taxes in offset.

0

The amount of income tax Mississippians would pay after a 10-year phased in elimination of the state income tax. With previous cuts being phased in, state income taxes next year will already be reduced to 4%, among the lowest rates in the nation.

8.5 %

The new Mississippi sales tax, up from current 7%, under the House tax plan assuming most local governments would not opt out of adding a new 1.5% local sales tax.

13 cents more a gallon

The cost of the House’s proposed new 5% gasoline tax, based on last week’s average cost of gasoline in Mississippi of $2.62. The new 5% tax would be on top of the flat 18.4 cents a gallon current state excise on gasoline.

4%

The tax on unprepared food once a reduction of the current 7% would be phased in over a decade under the House plan. The state would over time reduce its sales tax on such groceries to 2.5%, but local governments would add a 1.5% sales tax to such items unless they opt out.

Full Legislative Coverage

Lawmakers must pass new legislation to improve access to prenatal care

Lawmakers will file another bill this session to help low-income pregnant women get into the doctor earlier – after the federal government rejected the program set up under last year’s law, because of discrepancies between what was written into state law and federal regulations for presumptive Medicaid eligibility. Read the story.

Proposal: eliminate income tax, add 5% tax on gas, allow cities, counties to levy local sales tax

House leaders last week unveiled a sweeping tax cut proposal that would eventually abolish the state income tax, slash taxes on groceries, increase local sales taxes and shore up funds for state and local road work. Read the story.

A new Mississippi law aims to limit jailing people awaiting mental health treatment. Is it working?

Officials say a new law to decrease the number of people being jailed solely because they need mental health treatment has led to fewer people with serious mental illness detained in jails – but the data is contradictory and incomplete. Lawmakers plan legislation to make more counties report the data. Read the story.

How soon we forget: Mississippi House push for record tax cuts revives fear of repeat budget crises

Eight years ago, from a combination of dozens of tax cuts the Legislature approved and a slumping economy, the state saw a budget crisis that resulted in severely underfunded schools, government layoffs, a near halt to building new roads and highways and problems maintaining the ones we have, too few state troopers on the highways and cuts to most major state services. Read the story.

NAACP legislative redistricting proposal pits two pairs of senators against each other

The Mississippi chapter of the ACLU has submitted a proposal to the courts to redraw the state’s legislative districts that creates two new majority-Black Senate districts and pits two pairs of incumbent senators against one another. Read the story.

Legislation to send more public money to private schools appears stalled as lawmakers consider other changes

Some top lawmakers in Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Legislature are prepared to make it easier for students to transfer between public schools but remain skeptical of sending more public money to private schools. Read the story.

House passes $1.1 billion income tax elimination-gas and sales tax increase plan in bipartisan vote

A bill that phases out the state income tax, cuts the state grocery tax and raises sales taxes and gasoline taxes passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote on Thursday. Read the story.

Tate Reeves and other top Mississippi Republicans owe thanks to President Joe Biden

The tremendous cash surpluses that some state Republicans cite when defending their plan to eliminate the state’s income tax would not exist if not for the billions of dollars in federal funds that have been pumped into the state during Biden’s presidential tenure. Read the story.

Podcast: Mississippi transportation director discusses proposed new gasoline tax

Mississippi Department of Transportation Director Brad White tells Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance he’s staying “in his lane” and out of the politics of a House tax overhaul that would eliminate the income tax and raise sales and gasoline taxes, but that he’s pleased lawmakers are trying to address the long running need for a steady new stream of money to help cover highway maintenance needs. Listen to the podcast.

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