Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
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May 6
The Greenwood Commonwealth on spending by the Mississippi Department of Human Services:
News earlier this year about spending practices at the Mississippi Department of Human Services made the agency a shameful example of corruption. But further revelations this week are almost turning it into a punchline for humor.
State Auditor Shad White, whose investigators discovered $94 million worth of questionable spending at the agency during a recently completed audit, summed it up nicely when he said, “If there was a way to misspend money, it seems DHS leadership or their grantees thought of it and tried it.”
Six people, including the founder of Greenwood’s North New Summit School and a former DHS director, were indicted in February on charges of embezzling $4 million. At the time White called it one of Mississippi’s largest public corruption cases, but this week’s revelations are poised to increase the graft many times over.
If even a portion of the $94 million flagged by auditors turns out to be wasteful, corrupt spending, this could go down as one of Mississippi’s largest financial scandals of any kind. It’s even more embarrassing because it involves taxpayer money that was supposed to help poor people but instead got horribly and shamefully misdirected.
The net of embarrassment will be wide.
Nancy New, a Greenwood native who was heralded for years as an innovative leader in special needs education, was one of the supposed ringleaders in the scheme. According to the criminal indictment against her and the audit report, New used her Mississippi Community Education Center, which was supposed to help show the poor the way out of poverty, as a front to funnel money and luxuries to family, cronies and herself. Among the purchases made with federal welfare funds, according to the auditors, were three vehicles, each worth more than $50,000, for New and two sons. In fact, according to White, MCEC received $52 million of grant money from DHS over three years, and nearly all of it was either misspent or auditors were unable to verify the expenditures were lawful.
Brett Favre was another supposed MCEC beneficiary. The Hall of Fame quarterback got paid $1.1 million to make at least three speeches, but White said his auditors verified that Favre did not attend the events in question. Though Favre will not face criminal charges, if the story laid out by the auditor is accurate, the former NFLstar ought to give the money back to the state.
John Davis, the former DHS head whom White fingers as the kingpin in the fraud, allegedly brought a wicked crooked streak to the agency when former Gov. Phil Bryant promoted him in 2016. But there also was a conservative ideology on which Davis, New and others seem to have capitalized. Welfare reformers for the last couple of decades have said the nation needs to wean the poor off handouts - to implement the proverbial teach them to fish rather than giving them fish.
The philosophy was fine, but it also put a whole lot more money on the table for the unscrupulous to rake in - apparently with lax oversight at several levels, including from theLegislature.
It was not too long ago that legislative policymakers, determined to reduce fraud in the many programs DHS runs, devised ideas such as making sure that state welfare recipients passed a drug test before getting assistance.
The policymakers were looking for ripoffs in the wrong place.
Even if some DHS beneficiaries tricked the system into giving them more benefits than they deserved, it was small potatoes.
The real fraud was obviously occurring at the agency itself, perpetrated by those deciding how to spend the money.
Online: https://www.gwcommonwealth.com
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May 5
The Vicksburg Post on preparing for the future amid the ongoing pandemic:
The number of cases continues to increase, although it seems slower these days, or maybe we are immune to the numbers today.
The number of deaths around the state continues to rise and thankfully we have not yet grown cold to those staggering figures.
But as the state and nation begins to inch forward to reopening our economy one business at a me, it is important we begin to look ahead, look to what is next.
On May 4, Gov. Tate Reeves announced that restaurants will be allowed to reopen and outdoor recreation facilities and locations will be allowed to once again welcome visitors with strict guidelines.
On May 5, Mayor George Flaggs Jr. followed suit, announcing city parks and recreation facilities will soon be reopened and that restaurants that have fought hard to survive during severe social distancing and business restrictions will again be allowed to welcome dine-in customers.
But what is next? That is a great question and it is one that Dr. Jeff Holland, president of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, gave to local business leaders during a virtual meeting of the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce.
“…no matter where we are in our lives right now and no matter how much of a new normal we are going to have, the time we have right now is an opportunity to plan for what comes next because there is a next,” Holland said. “The next in our community still has the opportunity to be just as bright and just as shiny as it did before. It will be a function of what we make of it and what we have an opportunity to make out of it is still as splendid as it was going to be. We may do it a different way. We may achieve it through different means. But the resources that are here, the people that are here, the opportunities that are here, are all still here.
“What might have taken us six months to do a year ago might take us two years. But the opportunities are all still there,” he continued. “So one of the things that I want to lay at your feet today, especially to our business community, is that while we are struggling it is important to give as much opportunity and time as we can to how we break out and achieve a better tomorrow.”
How we as a community recover from the impacts of this pandemic - whenever it ends if it ever completely ends - will be a testament not to our government leaders, but to our business community and our workers. It will be a testament to our strength as a community and our faith as a people.
For many of our neighbors, today is tough and tomorrow will be just as tough.
As an economy that has tourism as one of its main pillars, our economic recovery may be slower than most, but it will happen.
There will be a me when our hotels will again be full, our parks packed and our riverfront again running out of room because of the riverboats. That might not be tomorrow, but it will happen.
In the meantime, it is important, Holland said, for us to prepare for that moment, not just to return to normal but to be beer than we were, smarter than we were and able to accomplish far more than we thought possible.
Our future is still amazingly bright and shiny because our people expect nothing less and have a history of achieving nothing less.
Online: https://www.vicksburgpost.com
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April 30
The Dispatch on using federal funding to expand coronavirus testing:
A lot of attention has been focused on Congressional efforts to stabilize the economy through the $2.1 trillion CARES ACT. As part of that act and an subsequent allocation, $610 billion has been set aside to help companies keep their employees off the unemployment rolls and their businesses operational through a program called Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
The loans are forgivable, provided the funds are used for certain expenditures such as payroll, utilities and rent.
There is another funding effort that has, until now, received far less attention - a $340 billion allocation to help states recover from the impact of COVID-19. This money can only be used to cover costs incurred because of the virus. It can’t be used to help the state, cities or counties cover lost tax revenue, which - in Mississippi - dwarfs the costs associated with fighting COVID-19.
Mississippi’s share of the pie comes to $1.25 billion and there’s a fight brewing over who will decide where that money goes. Gov. Tate Reeves has said he has the authority to disperse those funds. The Legislature, scheduled to resume the 2020 session on May 18, disagrees and may reconvene soon … to pass legislation that would give the Legislature the authority to disperses the funds. Right now, leaders in both chambers are counting heads to see if they will have enough votes not only the pass that legislation, but to override the Governor’s veto that is sure to come.
But the bigger question is how much of that $1.25 billion the state will be able to spend regardless of who gets to decide how those funds are dispersed.
Although we have no estimate of how much the state has spent on combating the virus, it’s likely the spending has been a fraction of the money allocated.
Under this “use or lose it” scenario, this represents a real opportunity to use every penny to protect the health of Mississippians.
One of the best uses of that money would be greatly expanding COVID-19 testing. As of now, only people who are showing symptoms of the virus are eligible to be tested, even though medical experts say there are many people who contract the virus without showing symptoms. In a very real sense, these undiagnosed carriers are the biggest threat to public health because they can pass along the virus without anyone knowing.
Many scientists, including those at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, say expanded testing must go hand-in-hand with efforts to relax social distancing. It’s important that we put systems in place now to ensure the outbreak in Mississippi doesn’t worsen.
We believe testing should be ramped up on a massive scale - starting with testing every person who is in a confined setting in close proximity to others. Every nursing home resident should be tested, as well as every incarcerated person. As of today, fewer than 100 people in the Mississippi Department of Corrections, including staff, has been tested.
There are close to 19,000 people currently being held in our state’s jails and prisons, people who - because of their confinement - cannot be self-quarantined or take other measures to avoid contracting the virus.
Once those people have been tested, funds should be used to provide widespread testing for asymptomatic people.
The governor and the Legislature can squabble over who gets to disperse that money.
But for the reset of us, it’s more important that the funds be used efficiently and exclusively to help make us safer.
If, at the end of this, the balance sheet doesn’t show a zero, our state has missed an opportunity to prevent sickness and death.
That’s what we should be focused on, isn’t it?
Online: https://www.cdispatch.com
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