Mississippi Today
Where the sheriff is king, these women say he coerced them into sex
In 2012, three months after Eddie Scott became sheriff of Clay County, Miss., a claim by a woman he had helped put behind bars threatened to tarnish his earliest days in office.
The woman said in an April court filing that, while chief deputy less than three years earlier, he had coerced her into a sexual relationship after she was arrested. Promising to use his influence in their rural community to keep her out of prison, she said, the lawman drove her to a hog farm to have sex in his patrol car on at least five occasions.
She laid out her allegations in state circuit court in October 2012 and asked a judge to overturn her prison sentence. To back up her story, the 26-year-old showed suggestive letters with a return address of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and signed by then-Chief Deputy Scott, who was 47.
“Hey Sexy,” he wrote to her in prison nine months before his election to the top job. “Got my blood pumping hard after reading the last two letters. Can’t stop thinking of how tight it is. I want all of that and more if you can.”
The revelations could have led to an internal investigation, a criminal inquiry or a public reckoning for the newly installed sheriff. Instead, powerful officials in Clay County took no action.
Judge Jim Kitchens ruled against the woman. Sheriff Scott’s predecessor, Laddie Huffman, had known of the allegations before retiring but did not report them to state or federal law enforcement agencies. There is no record of any internal investigation or disciplinary review.
The court file for the woman’s case — the only public record of the allegations — went missing at the Clay County Courthouse, likely for years. It was placed in the wrong filing cabinet, lost among hundreds of cases, until reporters pressed for it this summer while investigating other allegations against Sheriff Scott.
In interviews, Sheriff Scott would not directly answer whether he had ever had sex with the woman. When asked about his relationship with her, he called it a “mistake.” He denied coercing her.
“What she didn’t tell was, she was coming up to the office with her tits hanging out,” he said. “I never put myself in that position anymore.”
But an investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today, which included dozens of interviews and a review of court records and exclusively obtained internal documents, found that during his 11 years in office, Sheriff Scott has repeatedly been accused of using the power of his position to harass women, coerce them into sex and retaliate against those who criticize him or allege abuse.
In rural communities like Clay County — dominated by farmland and economic hardship — some sheriffs rule like kings. They can arrest anyone they choose, smear reputations and hand out reprieves and other favors. They have enormous latitude to hold people in jail as long as they please and they answer to no one, typically facing little press or prosecutorial scrutiny.
Three months ago, The Times and Mississippi Today told the story of another sheriff’s office, less than 40 miles away. Former Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree rose in the ranks of his Mississippi department and kept his elected office for years despite similar accusations of abuse. He was voted out in 2019 and now faces federal charges of bribery.
But in Clay County, Sheriff Scott remains in power even after repeated allegations of misconduct.
A local woman said the sheriff had repeatedly forced her into sex during her eight months in jail starting in 2017. When she began telling people after her release, she said, a sheriff’s deputy arranged to have drugs planted in her car — an allegation corroborated by a secretly recorded conversation with a man who said he had planted them.
In a court filing last year, a man claimed that Sheriff Scott had pursued a sexual relationship with his girlfriend and helped her avoid a lengthy prison sentence when the couple’s child died in 2019 with meth in his system. Prosecutors charged the parents with child neglect. While prosecutors sought only probation in the mother’s case, they offered the father a plea deal that called for 10 years in prison.
Also last year, a woman who once worked for the sheriff sued him, claiming he had subjected her to months of sexual harassment, including texts commenting on her breasts. After she filed her complaint, Sheriff Scott fired her boyfriend, a captain in the office.
At least five people who accused the sheriff of misconduct, or who were potential witnesses in the cases, said he had retaliated against them, efforts they believe were intended to silence them or discredit their allegations.
In 2021, the F.B.I. began investigating allegations against the sheriff. They interviewed nearly a dozen witnesses, including Sheriff Scott and staff members in his office. No charges have been filed.
Officials familiar with the allegations and how they have been investigated, including federal prosecutors, declined to comment. Sheriff Huffman, citing poor health, said he did not remember any of the allegations. Judge Kitchens did not respond to a request for comment.
In multiple interviews, including one on camera with reporters, Sheriff Scott, now 58, has denied harassing women, coercing them into sex or retaliating against anyone. He said he has had to defend his reputation from “con artists” and “drug users” who were inventing accusations to avoid jail time or somehow benefit financially.
The sheriff said he was the victim in all of this, and that he had been under attack. “It was a coordinated hit on me,” he said.
A Popular Figure
Sheriff Scott and his siblings grew up milking cows on their family farm in Montpelier, Miss., a rural crossroads along Highway 46 marked by a single gas station and the Baptist church his family attended.
After high school, he married, had children and worked at Bryan Foods, a meat processing company and one of the area’s biggest employers. Then he was called to serve on a Clay County grand jury and became fascinated with police work, he said.
In 1999, he became a full-time deputy for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office. He fought the drug trade just as meth was emerging as the scourge of rural America and he eventually became an investigator, responsible for solving the county’s occasional murders. He rose to chief deputy, second in command to Sheriff Huffman.
The logical heir when Sheriff Huffman retired, he won his first election in 2011 and took office the next year.
Today, Sheriff Scott is one of Clay County’s most popular figures and the face of area law enforcement. His brother, Terry, is listed as senior investigator on the Clay County Sheriff’s Office website; his son James serves on the Mississippi Highway Patrol’s SWAT team; and his sister, Tanya, has worked as the nurse for the county jail.
On the 137-acre spread where his family once raised cows, Sheriff Scott hosts fish fries and crawfish boils, where he swaps stories and swigs cold beer with fellow law enforcement officers and some of the county’s most powerful officials.
Sheriff Scott has covered his office walls with images of John Wayne, whom the sheriff considers his hero. The actor and the characters he played symbolize everything good and decent in America, Sheriff Scott said. “They don’t build them like him anymore.”
In his office, he keeps a Christmas card from former President Donald J. Trump, whom he has met several times. Beside it is a Bible that, he said, reminds him of his childhood.
“Back when we were kids, we all went to church and learned the difference between right and wrong,” he said. “And we’re not seeing that now.”
A New Allegation
Sheriff Scott’s public persona clashes with what a woman named Amber Jones says she experienced after she failed three drug tests and was arrested for violating probation in May 2017.
That summer, Ms. Jones, then 21, was called down from her cell at the Clay County Detention Center to the sheriff’s office, where Sheriff Scott asked if she would like to help out filing paperwork.
She had spent weeks in a dirty jail cell without seeing the sun, she recalled. She told him yes and became a trusty, an inmate with special privileges, working for the jail records administrator, Patty Stange.
One day in the office, Ms. Jones recalled, Sheriff Scott held out a hand to her and said, “If you take this splinter out of my finger, I’ll give you an eight-hour home pass.”
Desperate to see her family, she agreed, and a few days later, the sheriff himself checked her out of jail to take her home, she said. A mile down the road, the sheriff stopped the car by a small brick house and told her she had to change out of her jail clothes.
Ms. Jones said she felt uneasy as the sheriff led her inside, through a bedroom to a bathroom. He gave her a T-shirt and left her alone to change.
But he eventually returned and came up behind her, Ms. Jones recalled, touching her and commenting on her tattoos. Without another word, the sheriff pulled her to the bed and forced her to have sex, she said.
Ms. Jones said she felt that she had no choice — he was the sheriff. “I felt like I was worthless, like I didn’t have any control over my own body,” she said. “There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
After she visited her brother and returned to jail, she said, the sheriff called her to his office and told her she didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant because he had been “fixed.”
For the rest of Ms. Jones’s eight months in jail, this pattern continued, she said: Sheriff Scott offered her home passes to arrange sexual encounters.
Her accusations were detailed in a federal lawsuit filed last year by a former employee of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Caitlyn Wilson. The suit claims that Sheriff Scott sexually harassed Ms. Wilson, and it cites Ms. Jones’s allegations as evidence of the sheriff’s mistreatment of women. In sworn testimony last month, Sheriff Scott declined to say whether he had ever had sex with Ms. Jones, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The case is set for trial next year.
In interviews for this article, Sheriff Scott denied taking Ms. Jones out of jail or having sexual contact with her. “Amber is a sweet, likable girl on the face,” he said. “But we learned that she’s one of the biggest con artists that ever walked the face of the earth.”
Had he had taken her out of the jail, he said, their exit would have been recorded on surveillance video and sign-out sheets. When reporters asked to review such materials, Sheriff Scott said the computer system that logged inmates’ whereabouts was broken.
Sign-out sheets were kept among thousands of pages of jail records stacked in lopsided piles on an office floor. A review of the only records available revealed that Ms. Jones had received at least one home pass.
Ms. Jones’s description of the house where she said the sheriff took her for sex matches that of a place Sheriff Scott said he used for storage: a one-story brick home about a mile from the jail. Sheriff Scott said it was widely known that he used the house and that lots of people let themselves in and out using a key he kept under the doormat.
Ms. Jones shared account records showing that past midnight on Jan. 25, a week after she left jail, Sheriff Scott sent her a friend request on Snapchat, the disappearing-photo app. She also shared copies of text messages between them.
In the texts, Sheriff Scott asked Ms. Jones for “updates,” his code for nude photographs, she said. She felt forced to send them, she said, because her brother was in jail for drug possession.
In one text exchange from 2019, Ms. Jones asked the sheriff if he had heard anything about her criminal record being expunged. A “good update” would “help me remember,” he replied, adding a smiling emoji. In another exchange, the sheriff wrote that Ms. Jones owed him an “update” and sent her an emoji with a tongue sticking out.
Sheriff Scott said he couldn’t remember what he had meant by “update,” but denied that it involved nude pictures.
The only photos he received from Ms. Jones over Snapchat, he said, were “body shots” that he had requested from her as part of an investigation into jail inmates tattooing one another. Sheriff Scott said he had provided those photos to the F.B.I.
Two women, including another female inmate, had seen her in the house where she said the sheriff took her for sex.
On one occasion, she said, the sheriff drove her and the other jailed woman there, had them remove their clothing and gave them boxer shorts to put on. Ms. Jones’s were Superman-themed, with a cape to cover the otherwise-bare back, she said; the other woman received a “Duck Dynasty” pair.
Sheriff Scott posed the women together and snapped a photo from behind, according to Ms. Jones. The other woman, visibly upset, bolted for the bathroom, she said.
A few minutes later, Ms. Jones said she heard a knock at the door: It was Ms. Stange, the jail records administrator.
Ms. Stange said in a statement that she drove the women back from the house to the jail and they seemed in good spirits. She said she had no knowledge of “any sexual misconduct of Sheriff Scott with any female inmates.”
The second woman declined to comment. But in a Facebook post last year, she appeared to confirm that she had been present for the picture. Replying to a post by Ms. Jones describing the events, the woman recalled that she had said, “Oh, hell no,” and walked out of the room.
When asked about this under oath, Sheriff Scott took the Fifth.
‘I Knew I Was Being Set Up’
For years after her release from jail, Ms. Jones said she tried to put these abuses behind her. She stopped getting messages from the sheriff after blocking his number near the beginning of 2020, she said.
Then, in September 2021, a woman who had worked for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office came forward with new accusations that threatened to bring attention to years of alleged sexual misconduct by Sheriff Scott.
Caitlyn Wilson, a former investigative assistant who alleged sexual harassment, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint that said Sheriff Scott had made sexual advances toward her and threatened to fire her after she rebuked him. She made reference to other women whose similar experiences had not yet been made public.
“My situation has been exacerbated,” her complaint said, citing multiple women either in jail or employed by the county who had “made claims that the Sheriff was having sex with them. It appears to be well-known within the County that the Sheriff suffers from a sexual addiction, and this sexual addiction has affected my work performance and is causing me extreme fear and anxiety.”
The E.E.O.C. did not weigh in on the merits of Ms. Wilson’s complaint, but determined she had the right to sue.
In the lawsuit she filed in May 2022, Ms. Wilson described a group chat in which Sheriff Scott had sent several employees a steady stream of sexually explicit text messages.
His messages, reviewed by reporters, referred to women as “hookers,” “heifers” and “hos.” In one text, the sheriff suggested Ms. Wilson and Ms. Stange should “tag team” to give him oral sex. In others, he called himself a stallion and said women “liked to be hammered.”
Pictures the sheriff sent, which he called “humorous memes on the humor channel” under oath as part of the lawsuit, compared women to dogs that needed to be trained and joked about date rape.
Ms. Wilson said she decided to file her complaint after Sheriff Scott rubbed his crotch against her as he walked past her one day in the office. “I felt very violated,” she said in an interview. “I was just so shocked and surprised because he was my boss.”
Sheriff Scott denied touching Ms. Wilson inappropriately, saying he was running a high fever that day. “I was as sick as a dog,” he said. “Grabbing a woman was the last thing on my mind.”
He told reporters that none of his texts included sexual content and said under oath that anyone in the group chat could have stopped participating at any time.
When Ms. Wilson filed her complaint, Sheriff Scott assigned one of his own deputies to investigate. The final report concluded that the allegations were “unsubstantiated and punitive” and dismissed Sheriff Scott’s texts as adult humor shared among willing participants.
As the deputy investigated, Ms. Wilson said, she found herself increasingly isolated at work. She was barred from carrying her gun at the office and told to eat lunch at her desk. Most of her co-workers stopped talking to her, she said.
In December 2021, three months after Ms. Wilson filed her initial complaint, Sheriff Scott suspended her then-boyfriend, Jeremy Bell, a captain who had worked in the office for five years. According to a personnel report signed by Sheriff Scott, Mr. Bell had violated department policy by driving his patrol car outside of Clay County to visit Ms. Wilson’s house in a neighboring town. He was fired two days after Christmas.
It was around this time that Ms. Jones, who had not heard from Sheriff Scott for months, found herself under the scrutiny of local law enforcement again, she said.
Several weeks after Ms. Wilson submitted her complaint citing allegations that women in the jail had been forced to have sex with Sheriff Scott, Ms. Jones was pulled over by a narcotics officer from West Point, a town of about 10,000 people in Clay County.
The officer discovered a bag of diabetic needles filled with meth under her passenger seat and arrested her. Ms. Jones believes the drugs were planted there.
“I knew I was being set up,” she said. Frustrated and facing time behind bars, Ms. Jones decided two months later to post on a Facebook page called Mississippi Corruption, where she detailed for the first time her allegations against the sheriff.
“I was fixing to go to prison for a really long time for something that I didn’t even do, just because he was mad over his mistakes, over things that he had done,” she said.
A few months later, in April 2022, Ms. Jones received a video from her friend Madison Ray, she said. Ms. Ray said she had secretly recorded a conversation with Joshua Fulgham, a local diabetic man with prior drug arrests, because she suspected someone had planted the drugs while they were all hanging out the night before Ms. Jones’s arrest.
The recording, on Ms. Ray’s cellphone, captures him explaining how and why he placed the drugs in Ms. Jones’s car. “I put dope under that seat like Kyle told me to,” he says. “I didn’t even have to use mine. Kyle gave it to me.”
According to Ms. Wilson’s lawsuit, Mr. Fulgham is referring to Deputy Kyle Eaves, who used to work for Sheriff Scott. “The apparent purpose of Deputy Sheriff Eaves causing drugs to be planted upon Jones is to intimidate Jones or to cause her to be arrested so that she will lack credibility in claiming an involuntary sexual relationship with Defendant Scott,” the complaint states.
After the video spread around town, Mr. Fulgham was arrested on drug possession charges, taken to the jail and made a trusty. About six months later, he made a video at the Clay County jail and had it posted on Facebook. He accused Ms. Jones of being a liar out to get Sheriff Scott, but never recanted his previous statements.
“She needs help and rehab, just like me,” Mr. Fulgham said in the video, “and she needs to leave the sheriff alone.”
The sheriff sent a copy of the video to reporters and pointed to it as proof that Ms. Jones and others were lying. “Seems like their plan [is] coming to light,” he said.
Neither Mr. Fulgham nor Mr. Eaves responded to requests for comment.
About six months after the video was made, another potential witness in Ms. Jones’ case changed his story, too.
Her former boyfriend, Edward Adam Todd, had been arrested by Clay County deputies and was facing up to 50 years in prison for two burglary charges.
After initially backing Ms. Jones’ allegations, Mr. Todd later told investigators that he had lied to get the sheriff in trouble, according to transcripts of his April sentencing hearing.
The court transcript shows that Judge Kitchens praised Mr. Todd for his change of heart, saying his statements “cleared a local member of law enforcement that had been accused of something that probably turns out that was not true.”
At the hearing, the prosecutor suggested a seven-year prison sentence for Mr. Todd, citing his help to law enforcement. Judge Kitchens further reduced his sentence, cutting it to four years.
Instead of being transferred to prison to serve his sentence, Mr. Todd has remained at the Clay County jail, where he could not immediately be reached for comment.
Back on the ballot
Sheriff Scott believes that he will be vindicated and that voters will see through the allegations to re-elect him in the deciding Democratic primary election on Aug. 8.
He has won his previous elections easily. But this time, he faces an unexpected opponent who is an experienced law enforcement officer in Clay County: his own chief deputy, Ramirez Williams.
In February, Chief Deputy Williams announced his run for sheriff. The next month, Sheriff Scott demoted him to work the graveyard shift as a jailer.
When asked if Mr. Williams’s candidacy played a role in his demotion, the sheriff replied, “Not necessarily,” and declined to comment further.
Sheriff Scott insists he will leave office on his own terms, regardless of what becomes of the accusations against him.
He said he believes the federal investigation is over and he cooperated with their review, even voluntarily meeting with federal authorities to answer questions. “I wasn’t going to let a bunch of drugheads run me out of office,” he said.
The sheriff said he had been burned by extending compassion to people behind bars, but had no plans to stop. “You can’t turn your back,” he said. “One of these days, I might be in the same shape.”
He chuckled. “You never know.”
This article was co-reported by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today.
Read More: Sex abuse, beatings and an untouchable Mississippi sheriff — Read the first story in this series examining the power of sheriff’s offices in Mississippi.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Presidents are taking longer to declare major natural disasters. For some, the wait is agonizing
TYLERTOWN — As an ominous storm approached Buddy Anthony’s one-story brick home, he took shelter in his new Ford F-250 pickup parked under a nearby carport.
Seconds later, a tornado tore apart Anthony’s home and damaged the truck while lifting it partly in the air. Anthony emerged unhurt. But he had to replace his vehicle with a used truck that became his home while waiting for President Donald Trump to issue a major disaster declaration so that federal money would be freed for individuals reeling from loss. That took weeks.
“You wake up in the truck and look out the windshield and see nothing. That’s hard. That’s hard to swallow,” Anthony said.
Disaster survivors are having to wait longer to get aid from the federal government, according to a new Associated Press analysis of decades of data. On average, it took less than two weeks for a governor’s request for a presidential disaster declaration to be granted in the 1990s and early 2000s. That rose to about three weeks during the past decade under presidents from both major parties. It’s taking more than a month, on average, during Trump’s current term, the AP found.
The delays mean individuals must wait to receive federal aid for daily living expenses, temporary lodging and home repairs. Delays in disaster declarations also can hamper recovery efforts by local officials uncertain whether they will receive federal reimbursement for cleaning up debris and rebuilding infrastructure. The AP collaborated with Mississippi Today and Mississippi Free Press on the effects of these delays for this report.
“The message that I get in the delay, particularly for the individual assistance, is that the federal government has turned its back on its own people,” said Bob Griffin, dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany in New York. “It’s a fundamental shift in the position of this country.”
The wait for disaster aid has grown as Trump remakes government
The Federal Emergency Management Agency often consults immediately with communities to coordinate their initial disaster response. But direct payments to individuals, nonprofits and local governments must wait for a major disaster declaration from the president, who first must receive a request from a state, territory or tribe. Major disaster declarations are intended only for the most damaging events that are beyond the resources of states and local governments.
Trump has approved more than two dozen major disaster declarations since taking office in January, with an average wait of almost 34 days after a request. That ranged from a one-day turnaround after July’s deadly flash flooding in Texas to a 67-day wait after a request for aid because of a Michigan ice storm. The average wait is up from a 24-day delay during his first term and is nearly four times as long as the average for former Republican President George H.W. Bush, whose term from 1989-1993 coincided with the implementation of a new federal law setting parameters for disaster determinations.
The delays have grown over time, regardless of the party in power. Former Democratic President Joe Biden, in his last year in office, averaged 26 days to declare major disasters — longer than any year under former Democratic President Barack Obama.
FEMA did not respond to the AP’s questions about what factors are contributing to the trend.
Others familiar with FEMA noted that its process for assessing and documenting natural disasters has become more complex over time. Disasters have also become more frequent and intense because of climate change, which is mostly caused by the burning of fuels such as gas, coal and oil.
The wait for disaster declarations has spiked as Trump’s administration undertakes an ambitious makeover of the federal government that has shed thousands of workers and reexamined the role of FEMA. A recently published letter from current and former FEMA employees warned the cuts could become debilitating if faced with a large-enough disaster. The letter also lamented that the Trump administration has stopped maintaining or removed long-term planning tools focused on extreme weather and disasters.
Shortly after taking office, Trump floated the idea of “getting rid” of FEMA, asserting: “It’s very bureaucratic, and it’s very slow.”
FEMA’s acting chief suggested more recently that states should shoulder more responsibility for disaster recovery, though FEMA thus far has continued to cover three-fourths of the costs of public assistance to local governments, as required under federal law. FEMA pays the full cost of its individual assistance.
Former FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor, who served during Trump’s first term, said the delay in issuing major disaster declarations likely is related to a renewed focus on making sure the federal government isn’t paying for things state and local governments could handle.
“I think they’re probably giving those requests more scrutiny,” Gaynor said. “And I think it’s probably the right thing to do, because I think the (disaster) declaration process has become the ‘easy button’ for states.”
The Associated Press on Monday received a statement from White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in response to a question about why it is taking longer to issue major natural disaster declarations:
“President Trump provides a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him. Gone are the days of rubber stamping FEMA recommendations – that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Under prior Administrations, FEMA’s outsized role created a bloated bureaucracy that disincentivized state investment in their own resilience. President Trump is committed to right-sizing the Federal government while empowering state and local governments by enabling them to better understand, plan for, and ultimately address the needs of their citizens. The Trump Administration has expeditiously provided assistance to disasters while ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent wisely to supplement state actions, not replace them.”
In Mississippi, frustration festered during wait for aid
The tornado that struck Anthony’s home in rural Tylertown on March 15 packed winds up to 140 mph. It was part of a powerful system that wrecked homes, businesses and lives across multiple states.
Mississippi’s governor requested a federal disaster declaration on April 1. Trump granted that request 50 days later, on May 21, while approving aid for both individuals and public entities.
On that same day, Trump also approved eight other major disaster declarations for storms, floods or fires in seven other states. In most cases, more than a month had passed since the request and about two months since the date of those disasters.
If a presidential declaration and federal money had come sooner, Anthony said he wouldn’t have needed to spend weeks sleeping in a truck before he could afford to rent the trailer where he is now living. His house was uninsured, Anthony said, and FEMA eventually gave him $30,000.
In nearby Jayess in Lawrence County, Dana Grimes had insurance but not enough to cover the full value of her damaged home. After the eventual federal declaration, Grimes said FEMA provided about $750 for emergency expenses, but she is now waiting for the agency to determine whether she can receive more.
“We couldn’t figure out why the president took so long to help people in this country,” Grimes said. “I just want to tie up strings and move on. But FEMA — I’m still fooling with FEMA.”
Jonathan Young said he gave up on applying for FEMA aid after the Tylertown tornado killed his 7-year-old son and destroyed their home. The process seemed too difficult, and federal officials wanted paperwork he didn’t have, Young said. He made ends meet by working for those cleaning up from the storm.
“It’s a therapy for me,” Young said, “to pick up the debris that took my son away from me.”
Historically, presidential disaster declarations containing individual assistance have been approved more quickly than those providing assistance only to public entities, according to the AP’s analysis. That remains the case under Trump, though declarations for both types are taking longer.
About half the major disaster declarations approved by Trump this year have included individual assistance.
Some people whose homes are damaged turn to shelters hosted by churches or local nonprofit organizations in the initial chaotic days after a disaster. Others stay with friends or family or go to a hotel, if they can afford it.
But some insist on staying in damaged homes, even if they are unsafe, said Chris Smith, who administered FEMA’s individual assistance division under three presidents from 2015-2022. If homes aren’t repaired properly, mold can grow, compounding the recovery challenges.
That’s why it’s critical for FEMA’s individual assistance to get approved quickly — ideally, within two weeks of a disaster, said Smith, who’s now a disaster consultant for governments and companies.
“You want to keep the people where they are living. You want to ensure those communities are going to continue to be viable and recover,” Smith said. “And the earlier that individual assistance can be delivered … the earlier recovery can start.”
In the periods waiting for declarations, the pressure falls on local officials and volunteers to care for victims and distribute supplies.
In Walthall County, where Tylertown is, insurance agent Les Lampton remembered watching the weather news as the first tornado missed his house by just an eighth of a mile. Lampton, who moonlights as a volunteer firefighter, navigated the collapsed trees in his yard and jumped into action. About 45 minutes later, the second tornado hit just a mile away.
“It was just chaos from there on out,” Lampton said.
Walthall County, with a population of about 14,000, hasn’t had a working tornado siren in about 30 years, Lampton said. He added there isn’t a public safe room in the area, although a lot of residents have ones in their home.
Rural areas with limited resources are hit hard by delays in receiving funds through FEMA’s public assistance program, which, unlike individual assistance, only reimburses local entities after their bills are paid. Long waits can stoke uncertainty and lead cost-conscious local officials to pause or scale-back their recovery efforts.
In Walthall County, officials initially spent about $700,000 cleaning up debris, then suspended the cleanup for more than a month because they couldn’t afford to spend more without assurance they would receive federal reimbursement, said county emergency manager Royce McKee. Meanwhile, rubble from splintered trees and shattered homes remained piled along the roadside, creating unsafe obstacles for motorists and habitat for snakes and rodents.
When it received the federal declaration, Walthall County took out a multimillion-dollar loan to pay contractors to resume the cleanup.
“We’re going to pay interest and pay that money back until FEMA pays us,” said Byran Martin, an elected county supervisor. “We’re hopeful that we’ll get some money by the first of the year, but people are telling us that it could be [longer].”
Lampton, who took after his father when he joined the volunteer firefighters 40 years ago, lauded the support of outside groups such as Cajun Navy, Eight Days of Hope, Samaritan’s Purse and others. That’s not to mention the neighbors who brought their own skid steers and power saws to help clear trees and other debris, he added.
“That’s the only thing that got us through this storm, neighbors helping neighbors,” Lampton said. “If we waited on the government, we were going to be in bad shape.”
Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Wildeman from Hartford, Connecticut.
Update 98/25: This story has been updated to include a White House statement released after publication.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Presidents are taking longer to declare major natural disasters. For some, the wait is agonizing appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This article presents a critical view of the Trump administration’s handling of disaster declarations, highlighting delays and their negative impacts on affected individuals and communities. It emphasizes concerns about government downsizing and reduced federal support, themes often associated with center-left perspectives that favor robust government intervention and social safety nets. However, it also includes statements from Trump administration officials defending their approach, providing some balance. Overall, the tone and framing lean slightly left of center without being overtly partisan.
Mississippi Today
Northeast Mississippi speaker and worm farmer played key role in Coast recovery after Hurricane Katrina
The 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina slamming the Mississippi Gulf Coast has come and gone, rightfully garnering considerable media attention.
But still undercovered in the 20th anniversary saga of the storm that made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, and caused unprecedented destruction is the role that a worm farmer from northeast Mississippi played in helping to revitalize the Coast.
House Speaker Billy McCoy, who died in 2019, was a worm farmer from the Prentiss, not Alcorn County, side of Rienzi — about as far away from the Gulf Coast as one could be in Mississippi.
McCoy grew other crops, but a staple of his operations was worm farming.
Early after the storm, the House speaker made a point of touring the Coast and visiting as many of the House members who lived on the Coast as he could to check on them.
But it was his action in the forum he loved the most — the Mississippi House — that is credited with being key to the Coast’s recovery.
Gov. Haley Barbour had called a special session about a month after the storm to take up multiple issues related to Katrina and the Gulf Coast’s survival and revitalization. The issue that received the most attention was Barbour’s proposal to remove the requirement that the casinos on the Coast be floating in the Mississippi Sound.
Katrina wreaked havoc on the floating casinos, and many operators said they would not rebuild if their casinos had to be in the Gulf waters. That was a crucial issue since the casinos were a major economic engine on the Coast, employing an estimated 30,000 in direct and indirect jobs.
It is difficult to fathom now the controversy surrounding Barbour’s proposal to allow the casinos to locate on land next to the water. Mississippi’s casino industry that was birthed with the early 1990s legislation was still new and controversial.
Various religious groups and others had continued to fight and oppose the casino industry and had made opposition to the expansion of gambling a priority.
Opposition to casinos and expansion of casinos was believed to be especially strong in rural areas, like those found in McCoy’s beloved northeast Mississippi. It was many of those rural areas that were the homes to rural white Democrats — now all but extinct in the Legislature but at the time still a force in the House.
So, voting in favor of casino expansion had the potential of being costly for what was McCoy’s base of power: the rural white Democrats.
Couple that with the fact that the Democratic-controlled House had been at odds with the Republican Barbour on multiple issues ranging from education funding to health care since Barbour was inaugurated in January 2004.
Barbour set records for the number of special sessions called by the governor. Those special sessions often were called to try to force the Democratic-controlled House to pass legislation it killed during the regular session.
The September 2005 special session was Barbour’s fifth of the year. For context, current Gov. Tate Reeves has called four in his nearly six years as governor.
There was little reason to expect McCoy to do Barbour’s bidding and lead the effort in the Legislature to pass his most controversial proposal: expanding casino gambling.
But when Barbour ally Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, who presided over the Senate, refused to take up the controversial bill, Barbour was forced to turn to McCoy.
The former governor wrote about the circumstances in an essay he penned on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina for Mississippi Today Ideas.
“The Senate leadership, all Republicans, did not want to go first in passing the onshore casino law,” Barbour wrote. “So, I had to ask Speaker McCoy to allow it to come to the House floor and pass. He realized he should put the Coast and the state’s interests first. He did so, and the bill passed 61-53, with McCoy voting no.
“I will always admire Speaker McCoy, often my nemesis, for his integrity in putting the state first.”
Incidentally, former Rep. Bill Miles of Fulton, also in northeast Mississippi, was tasked by McCoy with counting, not whipping votes, to see if there was enough support in the House to pass the proposal. Not soon before the key vote, Miles said years later, he went to McCoy and told him there were more than enough votes to pass the legislation so he was voting no and broached the idea of the speaker also voting no.
It is likely that McCoy would have voted for the bill if his vote was needed.
Despite his no vote, the Biloxi Sun Herald newspaper ran a large photo of McCoy and hailed the Rienzi worm farmer as a hero for the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Northeast Mississippi speaker and worm farmer played key role in Coast recovery after Hurricane Katrina appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article presents a factual and balanced account of the political dynamics surrounding Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in Mississippi, focusing on bipartisan cooperation between Democratic and Republican leaders. It highlights the complexities of legislative decisions without overtly favoring one party or ideology, reflecting a neutral and informative tone typical of centrist reporting.
NEW ALBANY — After five hours in a courtroom where attendees struggled to find standing room, the Mississippi Public Service Commission voted to petition a judge to put the Holly Springs Utility Department into a receivership.
The PSC held the hearing Thursday about a half hour drive west from Holly Springs in New Albany, known as “The Fair and Friendly City.” Throughout the proceedings, members of the PSC, its consultants and Holly Springs officials emphasized there was no precedent for what was going on.
The city of Holly Springs has provided electricity through a contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority since 1935. It serves about 12,000 customers, most of whom live outside the city limits. While current and past city officials say the utility’s issues are a result of financial negligence over many years, the service failures hit a boiling point during a 2023 ice storm where customers saw outages that lasted roughly two weeks as well as power surges that broke their appliances.
Those living in the service area say those issues still occur periodically, in addition to infrequent and inaccurate billing.
“I moved to Marshall County in 2020 as a place for retirement for my husband and I, and it’s been a nightmare for five years,” customer Monica Wright told the PSC at Thursday’s hearing. “We’ve replaced every electronic device we own, every appliance, our well pump and our septic pumps. It has financially broke us.
“We’re living on prayers and promises, and we need your help today.”
Another customer, Roscoe Sitgger of Michigan City, said he recently received a series of monthly bills between $500 and $600.
Following a scathing July report by Silverpoint Consulting that found Holly Springs is “incapable” of running the utility, the three-member PSC voted unanimously on Thursday to determine the city isn’t providing “reasonably adequate service” to its customers. That language comes from a 2024 state bill that gave the commission authority to investigate the utility.
The bill gives a pathway for temporarily removing the utility’s control from the city, allowing the PSC to petition a chancery judge to place the department into the hands of a third party. The PSC voted unanimously to do just that.
Thursday’s hearing gave the commission its first chance to direct official questions at Holly Springs representatives. Newly elected Mayor Charles Terry, utility General Manager Wayne Jones and City Attorney John Keith Perry fielded an array of criticism from the PSC. In his rebuttal, Perry suggested that any solution — whether a receivership or selling the utility — would take time to implement, and requested 24 months for the city to make incremental improvements. Audience members shouted, “No!” as Perry spoke.
“We are in a crisis now,” responded Northern District Public Service Commissioner Chris Brown. “To try to turn the corner in incremental steps is going to be almost impossible.”
It’s unclear how much it would cost to fix the department’s long list of ailments. In 2023, TVPPA — a nonprofit that represents TVA’s local partners — estimated Holly Springs needs over $10 million just to restore its rights-of-way, and as much as $15 million to fix its substations. The department owes another $10 million in debt to TVA as well as its contractors, Brown said.
“The city is holding back the growth of the county,” said Republican Sen. Neil Whaley of Potts Camp, who passionately criticized the Holly Springs officials sitting a few feet away. “You’ve got to do better, you’ve got to realize you’re holding these people hostage, and it’s not right and it’s not fair… They are being represented by people who do not care about them as long as the bill is paid.”
In determining next steps, Silverpoint Principal Stephanie Vavro told the PSC it may be hard to find someone willing to serve as receiver for the utility department, make significant investments and then hand the keys back to the city. The 2024 bill, Vavro said, doesn’t limit options to a receivership, and alternatives could include condemning the utility or finding a nearby utility to buy the service area.
Answering questions from Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps, Vavro said it’s unclear how much the department is worth, adding an engineer’s study would be needed to come up with a number.
Terry, who reminded the PSC he’s only been Holly Springs’ mayor for just over 60 days, said there’s no way the city can afford the repair costs on its own. The city’s median income is about $47,000, roughly $8,000 less than the state’s as a whole.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post PSC moves toward placing Holly Springs utility into receivership appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This article presents a factual and balanced account of the situation involving the Holly Springs Utility Department and the Mississippi Public Service Commission. It includes perspectives from various stakeholders, such as city officials, residents, and state commissioners, without showing clear favoritism or ideological slant. The focus is on the practical challenges and financial issues faced by the utility, reflecting a neutral stance aimed at informing readers rather than advocating a particular political viewpoint.
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