by Robyn Tannehill, Mississippi Today
May 8, 2025

Editor’s note: Robyn Tannehill is the second-term mayor of Oxford and is unopposed for a third term. This piece is part of an ongoing Mississippi Today Ideas series showcasing perspectives of mayors across the state.

Oxford is experiencing unprecedented growth and the challenges we face are unique in Mississippi.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in 2023 Oxford had a population of only 27,000 residents. On any given weekday in Oxford, we have more than 80,000 people in town with a student population of 23,981 (an 11% increase from last year) and workforce and visitors totaling approximately 39,000 people a day coming in from surrounding counties. On an SEC home football game, Oxford swells to more than 250,000.

In the simplest terms, Oxford has to be able to provide water and sewer service all year for 300,000 people to be able flush the toilets — even if we only need it for 10 days a year. With a tax base of 27,000, it is difficult to make those numbers work. 

The past eight years have been a rollercoaster in Oxford – from a pandemic that nobody prepared me for to growth that never stops. However, Oxford is a much stronger community with a stronger economy today than we had eight years ago. We are setting records every month in sales tax collections. New businesses are opening across our community, and almost every corner of Oxford is being developed at an incredible pace.

To make all of this work, my staff and I have to think outside of the box.       

When your greatest challenges are the result of tremendous growth in Mississippi, you say ‘thank you’ and you get busy being proactive in your planning. Planning is exactly what my staff, city employees and I have done.

I was told before I was elected in 2017 that our state and federal partners did not provide financial assistance to Oxford. I saw that as a challenge. I quickly learned that Oxford had not been told “no,” but rather Oxford had never told its story and asked for help. My team and I have secured more than $246 million dollars from our state and federal partners in the last eight years. 

That is $246 million that has been and will continue to be invested in transportation infrastructure, water and sewer infrastructure, facility upgrades and capital improvements across our community that our local taxpayers will not have to pay for. It is the result of an investment of time and relationship building in Jackson and Washington, DC. And, it’s the reward for being a community that is planning ahead and being a good steward of the funds we are granted. It also takes give-and-take between our state and federal elected officials, and we have been so blessed with great partners.

Telling our stories and seeking assistance from our state and federal partners is something every community can do. As the chairman of the Mississippi Municipal League Education Committee, I facilitated a session at our annual meeting where staff members from our United States Senate and Congressional offices attended and shared the best ways for our local elected officials to contact their offices. Our state and federal partners often do not know a community’s needs unless a community takes the time to share challenges, needs and concerns.  

Law enforcement is becoming increasingly complex, and the public’s expectations of police officers are becoming more demanding. The city of Oxford and Oxford Police Department have spent hours evaluating our mission, how we serve the community and how we can improve. 

Policing today extends beyond the realm of enforcing laws. Officers are called upon to respond to non-criminal incidents, including many situations that involve mental health issues or people who have no one else to call for help. In these cases, officers are often ill-equipped to handle the call. Afer all, they are not psychologists, psychiatrists or social workers.

We often expect officers to serve as family therapists, medical first responders, homeless advocates, school counselors and dog catchers. Each call is different, and rarely do the calls follow training scenarios; therefore, police officers and police departments must adapt, sometimes on the fly.

As first responders, the Oxford Police Department typically receives the initial call when a citizen is in need or has become the victim of a crime. Our officers respond to more than 1,000 calls per year where victim services are needed, which we define as calls such as domestic violence, sexual assaults, child abuse, harassment and stalking. Wanting to offer the best care for our citizens facing these situations, the Oxford Police Department began evaluating how we can walk hand in hand with our victims and connect them with the appropriate partners who can best serve their long-term needs. 

To meet these needs, we established a Community Response Team within the Oxford Police Department. The Community Response Team is led by a full-time employee who has completed a 10-week FBI Victims Impact Training Program and has a background in social work. This employee is dedicated to victim services, and is accompanied by volunteer officers and staff members of the Oxford Police Department. Our Community Response Team is responsible for identifying cases that could benefit from these services, training our officers to recognize these cases, and connecting our citizens to these services. 

Knowing we have amazing resources in the Oxford community, we invited all of the different victim service organizations to a roundtable discussion. This meeting allowed our police department to put together a comprehensive list of victim services available in our community, and educated our officers on these organizations. We want to operate like the Emergency Room and connect victims to the best resources available. Our goal is to provide a safe place and services needed for victims to help them move forward.

In 2017, my administration established a Safe Site in our downtown business district with the Oxford Polic Department. Uniformed officers are there Wednesday through Saturday evenings assisting patrons who feel unsafe, need assistance in finding a ride home, or would like to be escorted to their car. This Safe Site has become a great way for Oxford Police Officers to meet and build relationships with our citizens, and especially with our student population. 

Realizing that at bar closing time thousands of students are exiting bars at the same time presenting issues with securing safe rides home, my administration established three transportation hub locations in the downtown area with UBER, Lyft and local taxis participating. The rideshare companies direct people requesting rides to one of three sites where cars can stack and be waiting to offer safe rides home. Oxford Police Department has made 100 less arrests for DUI this year since our installation of the hubs. 

Enormous growth requires innovative solutions. Local government is where the boots meet the ground. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Mayor Tannehill: Oxford officials view rapid growth, large crowds as opportunities, not problem 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 largely neutral perspective, focusing on Mayor Robyn Tannehill’s proactive approach to addressing the challenges of rapid growth in Oxford. While Tannehill emphasizes the importance of community partnerships and innovative solutions, there is no overt ideological bias in the language or framing of the piece. The content is more about problem-solving within local governance, rather than promoting a particular political viewpoint. The mention of securing funding and building relationships with state and federal partners suggests a pragmatic, solution-oriented approach without leaning toward any specific political ideology.

by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today
May 8, 2025

On the heels of the Legislature’s most recent failed attempt to legalize mobile sports betting in Mississippi, a 52-year-old gambling enthusiast named Gary drew a distinction between himself and his fellow bettors: He is a winner, and most of them are losers. 

“To say it honestly, most people are losers when it comes to sports betting because they lose control. But I hope they legalize it because I have control over my gambling,” Gary said. “Certain members of my family call me a degenerate, but I guarantee you I’m not a losing sports bettor.”

Gary, whose full name Mississippi Today agreed not to publish so he could speak candidly about placing illegal sports bets, is among the Mississippi residents who have together placed, according to some analysts, billions of dollars in online sports bets through illicit offshore betting platforms. He is also among the dozens of people who told Mississippi Today, in a written survey and interviews, about what legalization would mean for those who currently bet illegally. 

What emerged is a portrait of the state’s shadow sports betting economy alongside growing concern among experts about the potential for gambling addiction. 

A thriving black market 

The push to legalize mobile sports betting in Mississippi has prompted a debate that has captured the attention of powerful moneyed interests and ordinary citizens alike. It has unfolded in bustling casinos on the Coast, church pews in the Delta and the group text chains of sports-obsessed college students. 

Favorable regulatory and technological shifts have led to rapid growth for the online gambling market in recent years. But the industry continues to be undercut by illegal operators. Online gross gaming revenue in the U.S. topped $90 billion in 2024, $67 billion of which went to unlicensed players, according to research commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, a group that lobbies against illegal gambling.

Mobile sports betting statewide has remained illegal in Mississippi, largely due to fears that legalization could harm the bottom line of the state’s casinos and increase gambling addiction. In 2024, illegal online betting in Mississippi made up about 5% of the national illegal market, which is about $3 billion in illegal bets in Mississippi, proponents said that year. 

From the start of the most recent NFL season to about March, Mississippi had recorded 8.69 million failed attempts to access legal mobile sportsbooks in other states, according to materials presented to House members at a legislative meeting.

Those who engage in illegal online sports gambling and spoke to Mississippi Today described a black market that bridges newfangled technologies with the illicit gambling practices of yesteryear. Some use “arbitrage betting tools” and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to bet across the globe on different sites, pitting casinos against each other. Others keep themselves a degree removed from placing bets directly, using “bookies” to place bets on offshore gambling sites.

However people place illegal sports bets, the persistence of a thriving black market and an estimated $40 million to $80 million a year in tax revenue legal sports betting could bring in has prompted a fierce push for lawmakers to legalize the practice. The sports gambling lobby, as it has done in other states, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Mississippi politicians trying to win the Legislature’s support. 

The Mississippi House in 2023 and 2024 passed legislation legalizing online betting, but it died in the Senate.

Some form of sports betting is legal in 40 states, though only 20 have full online betting with multiple operators, according to Action Network, a sports betting application and news site. Some states have only in-person betting, and some only have a single online operator. Mississippi permits sports betting, but it only allows bets made in person at casinos or bets made with apps on mobile devices while inside casinos. 

That is how Greg, 38, placed his bets in Mississippi.

‘Hyper-targeted victimization’

Greg earned his master’s degree at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. When he was a student, Greg would make the roughly one-hour drive north to Tunica, home of several casinos along the Mississippi River. The area was one of the first to capitalize after Mississippi enacted the Mississippi Gaming Control Act in the early 1990s, which legalized dockside casino gambling. 

For Greg, driving through the rural Delta landscape to a casino was as a guardrail against over-indulgence, one that has been lost with the advent of smartphones and easy access to offshore betting platforms.   

“That’s a conscious effort, that you think the whole way, ‘is that money you need to be gambling or losing, versus (now) when you’re dialing it up on your phone,” he said. 

Greg has since moved to Kansas, a state that fully legalized mobile sports betting. He now bets on football and college basketball two to four times a week with wagers ranging from $55 to $500. He places bets on three different apps, all of which compete with special promotions enticing him to return. These deals are not typically matched by brick-and-mortar casinos 

“I can’t imagine walking into the Horseshoe in Tunica and them saying, bet $100 cash and we’ll give you a free $50.” 

Online betting is conducive to marketing campaigns that are precise in their execution and relentless in their frequency, experts told Mississippi Today. The rise of mobile sports betting has been accompanied by the introduction of new technologies in advertising and marketing, including those buoyed by artificial intelligence.

“You can absorb their betting patterns and use AI to predict when to send that notification reminding them to place a bet,” said Dan Durkin, an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Mississippi. “It’s hyper-targeted victimization, let’s just call it what it is.”

Durkin is chair of the steering committee for the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization that works to promote student well-being in intercollegiate athletics. The coalition has monitored the spread of mobile sports betting as college campuses have become hubs of activity for sports betting and, increasingly, gambling addiction.

According to a 2023 survey conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, sports wagering is pervasive among college students, with 67% of students betting on sports. Nearly 60% of students are likely to bet on sports after seeing an advertisement, the survey found.

And more than 60% engaged in sports gambling are betting on sports using highly addictive “in game/micro bets.” This type of betting allows users to wager on specific in-game moments, such as the next football play or golf swing. That sort of betting would become easier if sports betting is legalized because, under current law, many bettors say they still rely on bookies to place bets on offshore gambling sites for them.

These forms of online gambling, made seamless and accessible through digital apps, can allow addiction to fly under the radar.

Gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of any addiction disorder, according to the National Institutes of Health. The disorder’s ability to fester in private makes intervention more daunting, Durkin said.

PODCAST: Mississippi citizens often left in the dark on special-interest lobbying of politicians

“If you have a drug problem, you are going to have physical symptoms. If you have an alcohol problem, you are going to have physical symptoms. Gambling disorder can remain hidden for a very long time. Most of the folks that have it stay very functional,” Durkin said.

“Until they’re not.”

‘Gambler is going to find a way to bet’

For some students, the appeal of mobile sports betting stems not from cleverly-constructed digital marketing schemes, but as a source of camaraderie.

Cole, a 19-year-old college student, likes to bet on soccer and March Madness and the NBA Playoffs. He and a group of friends recently placed bets on the Master’s golf tournament

“It’s fun to do with your friends cause you’re all watching the game together, you get that adrenaline rush, and you celebrate together,” he said. “It’s not life-changing money, it’s mostly a social thing.”

Nevertheless, some Mississippi universities have become so alarmed by the rise of online gambling on their campuses, they are taking steps to prepare for increased addiction, even as mobile sports betting remains illegal. In Oxford, the University of Mississippi plans to hire a gambling clinician to help students struggling with addiction, according to The Daily Mississippian.

Influential religious institutions in Mississippi, a Bible Belt state, have long opposed the spread of gambling, a stance many retained as mobile sports betting came before the Legislature.

During the 2025 legislative session, David Tipton, District Superintendent for the Mississippi District United Pentecostal Church, sent a letter to the Mississippi Legislature opposing legalization on the grounds that it would harm young people in particular.

“The introduction of mobile sports betting would represent the most significant expansion of gambling in Mississippi since the legalization of casinos over thirty years ago,” Tipton wrote. “This development would effectively place a casino in the pocket of every Mississippian, creating new challenges, particularly for our youth and young adults who are the most vulnerable to gambling-related harm.” 

READ MORE: House Speaker Jason White, staff treated to Super Bowl by gambling giant pushing for legalized betting

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the country, and the extent to which that calls for an added layer of caution lies at the heart of the debate between proponents and opponents of legalization.

“I’m a libertarian. It’s not my job to tell people how to live their life,” said Gary, the 52-year-old sports gambler. “If you can’t control yourself, I’m sorry, learn some control. Is that brutal? Probably, yes. If you want help, there’s way to get help. You can self-ban yourself.”

READ MORE: Questions to ask Mississippi lawmakers about transparency, ethics, special-interest money

Gary says every gambler is responsible for managing their own “leak.”

The term often refers to a consistent weakness in a bettor’s strategy, but Gary also uses it to connote a weakness of will.  

“Every gambler has a leak, as we call them. Drugs, women, money, strippers, or the dice table, which was my leak. I could win every sports bet, but I’m going to walk through the casino and go to the dice table and lose money on a dice table,” Gary said.

“The Legislature, in their great, infinite wisdom, where they say they are protecting people, they’re not protecting anybody except casinos. A gambler is going to find a way to bet.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post 'A casino in every pocket': Mississippi illegal online sports betting thrives as legalization stalls 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 balanced view of the debate surrounding mobile sports betting in Mississippi. It reports on both the arguments for and against legalization without strongly endorsing one side over the other. The piece discusses the perspectives of individuals, including sports bettors and opponents from religious institutions, as well as financial considerations and public health concerns. While there are references to lobbying and the role of lawmakers, the article primarily focuses on providing a factual overview of the situation without exhibiting clear ideological leaning. The language remains neutral and factual throughout the piece.

by Allen Siegler, Mississippi Today
May 7, 2025

DUBLIN — Pregnant with her second child and entering addiction treatment at a Coahoma County residential program in 2019, Katiee Evans worried she had ruined her life beyond repair. The Columbus native had struggled for years with methamphetamine addiction, a disorder that led the state to take custody of her then-7-month-old daughter. 

Evans didn’t complete treatment after giving birth to her first child, but the prospect of remaining with her newborn motivated her to try it again. This time, she stayed sober during her second pregnancy – which she credits to being surrounded by dozens of other new parents going through the program, many of whom had their children with them.

“I got to love on my baby, and everybody else’s baby,” she said. 

Since then, Evans has reunited with her first child, given birth to a third baby and stayed sober. She now works for Fairland, the addiction treatment center that served her, helping to administer the program she credits with stabilizing her life. 

But a major source of funding for this program has been cut. In March, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration abruptly stopped distributing billions of public health dollars across the country. About $4.1 million of that was for Mississippi’s community mental health centers, organizations across the state that run services including the addiction treatment program Evans attended. 

A federal district judge has temporarily blocked the cuts, but the ruling only applies to the 23 states that sued the federal government, not Mississippi. 

“This announcement caught us off guard,” said Adam Moore, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, the agency that administers state and federal funds to the centers.

The centers’ services — including crisis response teams, adolescent support and development disability programs — are available regardless of people’s ability to pay. That’s possible in large part, center directors say, because of funds like the halted grants. Moore said that about 43% of the dollars the state’s mental health department provided centers in the 2024 fiscal year came from the federal government. 

A spokesperson for the federal government’s mental health agency said Mississippi’s money was granted to address the pandemic, which is no longer a threat to the U.S. She said a new federal agency called the Administration for a Healthy America will prioritize mental health efforts. 

The Region 6 center, which serves much of the Delta and runs the Fairland clinic, is expected to lose out on just over $850,000 in federal funds, according to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health. 

Part of the program that provided financial assistance for mothers and children to transition to independent housing had to be shut down in March as a result of the loss of funding. Phaedre Cole, the region’s executive director and Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers president, said she’s uncertain whether the state agency would replace the money for that service. 

Joanne Shedd, a Fairland peer support specialist who also completed treatment at the center, said it can be nearly impossible to find housing options for new mothers and their children without that additional resource. 

“Our whole game plan that we have with these clients has got to completely change,” she said. 

CMHCs struggled to stay afloat before federal cuts

Mississippi’s community mental health centers have struggled to fund their services for years. Four have closed since 2012. Cole said consolidations have created more financial strain on her center, which has grown from serving eight to 16 counties over the past dozen years. 

Another four of the remaining 11 centers have little on-hand money to buffer any funding losses, according to the Mississippi Office of the Coordinator of Mental Health Accessibility’s latest quarterly report.

Cole said much of this financial instability comes from the responsibilities of community mental health centers: the Department of Mental Health tasks them with being the “primary service providers of outpatient community-based services” for kids and adults with mental health needs in every county they serve. 

“No one’s providing those safety net services that we provide,” Cole said. 

That means they maintain programs that are critical but expensive, including crisis stabilization unit beds and the Fairland program. 

While Cole said the maternal substance use program is costly, it addresses a disorder that can lead babies to be born prematurely, underweight and with birth defects if untreated. Substance use is also the second leading cause of Mississippi’s pregnancy-related deaths, according to the state’s most recent maternal mortality report. 

The Delta, where Fairland is located, has the highest rates in the state of mothers dying during pregnancy and the postpartum periods. 

In Oxford, Melody Madaris leads Communicare, the Region 2 Community Mental Health Center for six Mississippi counties. She said the majority of Communicare’s patients can’t pay for the center’s services, and her organization provided nearly $7 million of free care last year.

Because the organization relies heavily on federal funds, Madaris was shocked when she found out the federal mental health agency stopped hundreds of thousands of dollars Communicare was set to receive. 

“It was absolutely terrifying,” she said. “Within a day, we started looking at our budget and how we can continue to provide services at the same level.” 

Communicare is now unable to staff a diversion coordinator, an employee dedicated to working with judges overseeing mental illness-related civil commitment cases. The diversion coordinator helped people in this position and their family members determine if the person could get treatment in a community setting and avoid state hospital commitment. 

It’s the type of service the Department of Justice accused Mississippi of not doing enough of in its seven-year lawsuit against the state’s Department of Mental Health. Although the lawsuit was overturned in 2023, the mental health department’s executive director has said avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations remains a priority for the agency. 

“A lot of CMHCs had a lot of success with that role,” Madaris said. “When the federal government stopped those grants, that role stopped.” 

Moore, the Mississippi mental health department’s spokesperson, said the agency continues to fund 33 similar roles, called court liaisons, across the state. He also said the agency plans to use state alcohol tax revenue and other federal grant funds to try to fill the gaps, but there’s not enough to fully cover the lost dollars.

“You can backfill and keep things going on a short term basis,” said Mississippi Senate Public Health Committee Chairman Hob Bryan, D-Amory. “But long term, if the federal funding goes away, then those services are going to go away.”

State House Public Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, said he and other state lawmakers had assumed these funds would be available until September. 

“It does not seem fair,” he said. “We have a real, real need for mental health services in Mississippi, and I hate that this has happened. But it kind of seems par for the course, the way things are going with this Trump Administration right now.” 

Creekmore noted that in its last regular session, the Legislature passed a law that instructs the state to apply for a federal community mental health payment model that allows Medicaid to reimburse more for services. But it’s up to the federal government to approve Mississippi’s application. 

‘This is life or death for people’

Cole, the Region 6 executive director, said it would dramatically help Community Health Center operations if Mississippi’s application is approved next year. But she worries more drastic cuts could be coming – ones that would cripple the centers completely. 

She said centers like Region 6 receive other funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, a source of federal COVID-19 relief funds, and those contracts are set to end next year. If that money is also canceled, Cole said the state mental health centers would likely have to cut more services.

Additionally, the U.S. House of Representatives has adopted a resolution to cut $880 billion over the next 10 years from agencies including Medicaid, the federal and state partnership that provides health insurance to over half a million Mississippians. Cole said Region 6 receives over half its funding from Medicaid, and any cuts to the program could be “disastrous” for community mental health centers.

For Evans, the Columbus mother who was treated at Fairland, she wishes decision makers would visit Mississippi’s Community Mental Health Centers before cutting their funding. 

While people treated there, like those with severe mental illness, can’t always travel to Washington to advocate for themselves, she said it’s easy to see the deep impact programs like the one that saved her life have once one is inside the building.

“This is life or death for people. There’s no other way around it.”

Community Health Reporter Gwen Dilworth contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Mental health cuts threaten program for moms 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 sympathetic portrayal of the impact of federal mental health funding cuts on vulnerable populations in Mississippi, particularly mothers recovering from addiction. The narrative centers on personal stories and expert commentary to emphasize the value of these programs and the risks of defunding them. While it includes criticism of the Trump Administration’s policies—particularly a quote blaming the current administration—it largely focuses on reporting factual developments and quotes from stakeholders. The framing, however, tends to highlight the negative consequences of conservative policy decisions, aligning it with a Center-Left perspective.