Mississippi Today
Welfare agency set to depose Brett Favre, but both want to conceal transcripts
Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre is set to give sworn testimony in the ongoing welfare fraud civil suit at the end of this month.
But both Favre and the Mississippi Department of Human Services, which is suing the famous athlete and 44 others, have asked the judge to issue a protective order allowing parties to block evidence in the case, such as deposition transcripts, from being shared with the public.
If Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Faye Peterson signs the order โ to which 16 other defendants objected โ Favre’s deposition transcript would be considered confidential for at least 30 days after it is completed, after statewide elections in November. After that, Favre would be able to designate deposition exhibits or portions of transcripts confidential, preventing any other parties from sharing the materials with anyone outside of their counsel, the court or potential witnesses.
MDHS has accused Favre of pushing welfare officials to fund the construction of a volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi and make a seven figure investment in a pharmaceutical company he was promoting โ both of which MDHS says were shams that personally benefitted Favre and others. Favre denies he had anything to do with an illegal scheme.
Since MDHS first filed the case in May of 2022, Peterson has issued several procedural orders, most significantly denying Favre’s motion to dismiss the complaint against him and denying several motions to stay the case. She also denied a motion for protective order from the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation.
โThe primary purposes of the Agreed Protective Order are to prevent confidential discovery materials from being made public and used outside of this litigation, and to give parties an opportunity to make an application that confidential materials be filed under seal,โ reads the Sept. 22 motion for protective order by MDHS, Favre and another defendant in the case, virtual reality company Lobaki, Inc.
Both MDHS and Favre also plan to depose former University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney Bennett on Oct. 31 in Nebraska, where Bennett recently relocated to serve as chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln after resigning from USM in 2022.
MDHS has used a text message that Bennett sent former Gov. Phil Bryant in 2020 as the basis for its claim that Favre personally committed to provide funds to build the volleyball stadium, which bolsters the argument that Favre stood to personally benefit from the diversion of MDHS funds to the project.
โI will see, for the โumpteenth time’ if we can get him (Favre) to stand down,โ Bennett wrote to Bryant in late January of 2020. โThe bottom line is he personally guaranteed the project, and on his word and handshake we proceeded. It’s time for him to pay up โ it really is just that simple.โ
Neither Bennett nor Bryant are defendants in the civil case.
Favre’s legal team denies that any of the welfare funds channeled to USM helped satisfy Favre’s pledge, especially considering that the funds were transferred in 2017, while Favre signed his guarantee in 2018.
Favre said that with respect to the proposal to use MDHS block grants to fund the volleyball stadium, โThe Governor was aware of the source of the funding and supported it.โ
At the time Bennett sent Bryant the text about Favre, Bryant had just left office and was discussing entering a business deal with Prevacus and PreSolMD, the Favre-backed pharmaceutical startups that also received more than $2 million in stolen welfare funds.
Bryant denied involvement in either deal.
MDHS sent an email to each defendant in the civil suit to gauge their support for a protective order. The following 16 defendants objected:
- Nancy New, her private school company New Learning Resources Inc. and her nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.
- The nonprofit’s accounting firm Williams, Weiss, Hester & Co.
- Nancy New’s sons Zach and Jess New, Jess New’s company Magnolia Strategies and the LLC they all started together, N3 Holdings.
- Former state welfare director John Davis and his nephew Austin Smith.
- Former welfare agency attorney William Garrig Shields.
- Former welfare subcontractor NCC Ventures and its owner Nicholas Cronin Coughlin.
- Former welfare subcontractor Chase Computer Services.
- Retired football player Marcus Dupree and his organization Marcus Dupree Foundation.
These defendants said they were โhesitant to agree that materials, which [they] have never seen, can be made confidential simply with the markings of an attorney,โ reads the Sept. 22 motion. The objecting defendants also argued that โโrecords of public officials and former public officials’ may be marked as โconfidential’; and that โsome party will designate as โconfidential’ matters which should not be confidential, and we will then have to go through an unknown length of time to obtain a court hearing in order to have the matters made public.’โ
The remaining 26 defendants did not respond either way.
โAs noted, discovery materials are not a matter of public record and to the extent that any designated discovery materials are to be filed with the Court, if any party or non-party requests they be sealed, the Court must ultimately decide if sealing is warranted,โ the motion reads.
MDHS’s original counsel in the civil suit first scheduled depositions of 13 defendants in July of 2022, and they were set to take place between August and November of last year.
But days after filing the notice, Gov. Tate Reeves and the welfare department chose to fire the attorney, former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, which put a halt to securing the sworn statements.
Favre’s Oct. 26 deposition, set at the Hotel Indigo in Hattiesburg near Favre’s home, will be the first in the case unless one is scheduled before then.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
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High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader support; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction โoverly broadโ in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as โfederal intrusion into RDC’s budgetโ โ especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.ย
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
โBut the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,โ the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
2 out of 5 child care teachers make so little they need public assistance tosupport their families
This story about child care wages was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit,
independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger’s early childhood newsletter.
Caring for children during their first few years is a complex and critical job: A child’s
brain develops more in the first five years than at any other point in life. Yet in America,
individuals engaged in this crucial role are paid less than animal caretakers and
dressing room attendants.
That’s a major finding of one of two new reports on the dismal treatment of child care
workers. Together, the reports offer a distressing picture of how child care staff are
faring economically, including the troubling changes low wages have caused to the
workforce.
Early childhood workers nationally earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, resulting in
poverty-level earnings for 13 percent of such educators, according to the first report, the
Early Childhood Workforce Index 2024. Released earlier this month by the Center for
the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, the annual
report also found:
? 43 percent of families of early educators rely on public assistance like
food stamps and Medicaid.
? Pay inequity exists within these low wages: Black early childhood
educators earn about $8,000 less per year than their white peers. The
same pay gap exists between early educators who work with infants and
toddlers and those who work with preschoolers, who have more
opportunities to work in school districts that pay higher wages.
? Wages for early educators are rising more slowly than wages in other
industries, including fast food and retail.
In part due to these conditions, the industry is losing some of its highest-educated
workers, according to a second new report, by Chris M. Herbst, a professor at Arizona
State University’s School of Public Affairs. That study compares the pay of child care
workers with that of workers in other lower-income professions, including cooks and
retail workers; it finds child care workers are the tenth lowest-paid occupation out of
around 750 in the economy. The report also looks at the โrelative quality’ of child care
staff, as defined by math and literacy scores and education level. Higher-educated
workers, Herbst suggests, are being siphoned off by higher-paying jobs.
That’s led to a โbit of a death spiralโ in terms of how child care work is perceived, and
contributes to the persistent low wages, he said in an interview. Some additional
findings from Herbst’s study:
? Higher-educated women increasingly find employment in the child care
industry to be less attractive. The share of workers in the child care
industry with a bachelor’s degree barely budged over the past few
decades, increasing by only 0.3 percent. In contrast, the share of those in
the industry who have 12 years of schooling but no high school degree,
quadrupled.
? Median numeracy and literacy scores for female child care workers
(who are the majority of the industry staff) fall at the 35 th and 36 th
percentiles respectively, compared to all female workers. Improving these
scores is important, Herbst says, considering the importance of education
in the early years, when children experience rapid brain development.
This doesn’t mean child care staff with lower education levels can’t be good early
educators. Patience, communication skills and a commitment to working with young
children also matter greatly, Herbst writes. However, higher education levels may mean
staff have a stronger background not only in English and math but also in topics like
behavior modification and special education, which are sometimes left out of
certification programs for child care teachers.
You can read Herbst’s full report here, and the 2024 workforce index here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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