Mississippi Today
DOJ order details third-party role over Jackson water, feds file new complaint
DOJ order details third-party role over Jackson water, feds file new complaint
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it filed the interim proposal for overseeing Jackson's water system, which the city council approved on Nov. 17, making the agreement available to the public.
The parties await a federal court's approval before the agreement, which is set to last a year, takes effect. The DOJ also filed a new complaint against the city for its inability to comply with previous enforcement from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The order names Ted Henifin as Jackson's interim third-party manager. Henifin, a senior fellow at the nonprofit U.S. Water Alliance, managed the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia Beach from 2006 until 2022, overseeing the city's sewer system.
The goal of the interim agreement, according to the order, is to stabilize Jackson's water system while the city and federal government look at long-term solutions, through litigation or a consent decree.
Henifin's job, as the order lays out, will be to "operate, maintain, and control" the water system in compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as to make capital improvements, including specific projects prioritized in the order. The order also gives the third-party team authority over Jackson city employees and contractors to carry out those projects.
The order gives the third-party leadership broader spending authority than what the city would normally have. For instance, under the order, the management team won't have to comply with state laws regulating how a governing body procures contracts. The order writes instead that the third-party team "will use best efforts to have the procurement process be competitive, transparent, and efficient." The order requires that the manager consult with the city attorney over any contracts longer than a year.
The document also gives Henifin and his team power to make rate changes for Jackson water customers.
Within 60 days, Henifin will have to make a funding strategy, which will include a short-, medium- and long-term — over 5 years — spending plan and schedule for the water system. In that plan, Henifin can propose rate changes as well as governing alternatives.
If the plan does include a rate change for customers, the order requires the mayor to put the change before the city council. But even if the city council doesn't approve the rate change, the order gives the third-party manager the authority to change the rates anyway, as long as it's been more than a year since the last rate adjustment. City officials last raised rates in December 2021.
Under the order, the third-party manager does not have the authority to consolidate, or regionalize, Jackson's water system, or allow another governing body to operate the system.
The agreement also stipulates that documents in the third-party manager's possession are not subject to public records laws because it is not a federal, state or local agency. The order does require the manager to make a website to inform the public with status reports, requests for proposals, and quarterly updates.
The federal court, after approving this order, would have authority over how Henifin's team is complying with the agreement to manage Jackson's water system.
The order lists 13 projects as priorities for the management team to facilitate:
- Operations and management contract
- Winterization of both treatment plants
- Corrosion control
- Implement an alternative water source plan
- Distribution system study, analysis and implementation, including replacing water lines, prioritizing any lead lines found
- System stabilization plan, including a sustainable revenue model
- SCADA system improvements, including sensors, actuators
- Assess and repair chemical systems at plants and wells
- Chlorine system improvements at O.B. Curtis
- Intake structure repairs
- Restore redundancy at treatment facilities, including pumps
- Sludge assessment and removal at water storage facilities
- Assess power vulnerability
The agreement gives Henifin's team a $2.98 million budget for a 12-month period. That total includes $400,000 for Henifin's salary, travel and living expenses; $1.1 million for staff pay and expenses; $1.4 million for contractor and consultant support; and $66,000 for other expenses, such as phones, computers, and insurance.
The order states that the budget won't be funded by customers' water bills. The city will pay for the budget with money from the EPA and other grants.
Gov. Tate Reeves applauded the news, saying in a statement that it's "excellent news" that "Mayor (Chokwe Antar Lumumba) will no longer be overseeing the city's water system."
Reeves also announced that he authorized MEMA to commit $240,000 from the state's Disaster Mitigation Fund "as a bridge" to help during the transition of control over the water system.
Read the full order here.
New complaint
The DOJ also filed a new complaint against Jackson on Tuesday requesting a court-ordered injunction to require the city to comply with federal drinking water laws.
The complaint notes the city's inability to comply with previous enforcement actions issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, including an Administrative Order issued in July, 2021.
The filing details various violations of that order:
- Staffing shortages: in just four months of operation this year, J.H. Fewell didn't have a certified Class A operator in at least 15 instances, according to the complaint.
- Not implementing an alternative water source plan during boil water notices.
- Turbidity in the water.
- Not beginning the process to rehabilitate filters at J.H. Fewell on time.
- Not implementing the city's corrosion control plan at J.H. Fewell.
The complaint also notes that, because of the system's defficiencies, contaminants are either present or likely to enter the system.
"State and local actions have been insufficient to prevent the threat of additional failures," the complaint says. "Such failures are likely to continue to occur, whether under normal working conditions or in extreme weather events."
Read the full complaint here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
‘Will you trust us?’: JPS plan for stricter cellphone policy makes some parents anxious
Superintendent Errick Greene wanted to be very clear with the roughly 50 parents who attended Thursday night’s community listening session: Jackson Public Schools already has a policy banning students from using cellphones at school.
But the leadership of Mississippi’s third-largest school district has decided that a new approach is in order, citing a series of incidents in recent years involving students using their cellphones to bully others, organize fights or text their parents inaccurate information about violence happening at or near their school.
“To be clear, it’s not the majority of our scholars, but I can’t look at a class and know who’s gonna be bullying today, who’s gonna be scheduling a meetup to cut up today,” Greene said toward the end of the hour-long meeting held at the JPS board room. “I can’t look at a group of scholars and say, ‘OK, yeah, you’re the one, let me take your phone, the rest of you can keep it.’”
Under the rewritten policy, students who take their phone out of their backpacks during the instructional day will lose it for five days for the first infraction, 10 days for the second and 45 days for the third. Currently, the longest the school will hold a phone is 10 days.
The Jackson school board is expected to consider the new policy at its meeting next week and the district hopes to implement the change when the new school year starts later this month, said Sherwin Johnson, the district’s communications director.
Students also currently have the option to pay up to a $25 fine to get their phone back, but the district wants to rescind that aspect of the policy.
“We’ve discovered that’s not equitable,” said Larrisa Harris, the JPS general counsel. “Not everybody has the resources to come and pay the fine.”
Support for the new policy among the parents who spoke at the listening session varied, but all had questions. How will students access the internet on their laptops if the WiFi is spotty at their school and they need to use their cellphone hotspot? If students are required to keep their phones in their backpacks during lunch, how will teachers prevent stealing? How will JPS enforce the ban on using cellphones on the bus?
One mother said she watches her daughter’s location while she rides the bus to Jim Hill High School so she knows her daughter made it safely.
“If they can’t have it on the bus, who’s gonna enforce that?” she said. “I’m just gonna be real, the bus driver got to drive.”
A common theme among parents was anxiety at the prospect of losing direct contact with their kids in the event of an emergency. A Pew Research survey found that most adults, regardless of political affiliation, support cellphone bans in middle and high school classes. But those who don’t say it’s because their child can use their phone during emergencies.
“If something happened, will we get an automatic alert to notify us? Because a lot of the time we see things on social media first,” said Ashley McIntyre, a mother of three JPS students. She attended the meeting with her eldest daughter, Aaliyah, who recently graduated from Powell Middle School.
Though JPS does have an alert system for parents, McIntyre said she didn’t know if it existed. She cited a bomb threat at Powell last year that she found out about because Aaliyah texted her, not through a school alert.
“We didn’t know what was going on, and she texted me, ‘Mom, I’m scared,’ so I went up there,” McIntyre said. “So that puts us on edge.”
Aaliyah said she uses her phone to text her mom and watch TikTok, but she feels like her classmates use their phones to be popular or to fit in. When a fight happens, she said many students pull out their phones to record instead of trying to get an adult who can stop it. Then the videos end up on Instagram pages dedicated to posting fights in JPS.
“Once the principal found out about the fight pages, they came around looking inside our videos and camera rolls,” she said. “It happened to me last year. They thought I had a fight on my phone.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Laketia Marshall-Thomas, the assistant superintendent for high schools, took the mic to respond to one parent who said she was concerned that older students would not come to school if they knew their phone could be taken.
“What we have seen is, it’s the older students—” Marshall-Thomas began.
“They are the problem,” someone from the audience chimed in.
“We’re not saying they cannot have them,” she continued. “We know that they have after school activities and they need to communicate with their moms … but we have had major, major issues with cellphones and issues that have even resulted in criminal outcomes for our scholars, but most importantly, our students … have experienced a lot of learning loss.”
While the district leadership did not go into detail about the criminal incidents, several pointed to instances where students have texted their parents inaccurate information, such as an unsubstantiated rumor there was a gun during a fight at Callaway High School or that a shooting outside Whitten Middle School occurred on school property.
“Having phones actually creates far more chaos than they help anyone,” Greene said.
While cellphones have been banned to varying degrees in U.S. schools for decades, youth mental health concerns have renewed interest in more widespread bans across the country. Cellphone and social media usage among school-aged kids is linked to negative mental health outcomes and instances of cyberbullying, research shows.
At least 11 states restrict or ban cellphone use in schools. After Mississippi’s youth mental health task force recommended that all school districts implement policies that limited cellphone and social media usage in classrooms, a bill that would’ve required school boards to create cellphone policies died during the legislative session. Still, several Mississippi school districts have passed their own policies, including Marshall County and Madison County.
Another concern about the ban was a belief among a couple of speakers at the meeting that cellphones can help parents hold the district accountable for misdeeds it may want to hide.
“I just saw a video today. It was not in JPS, but it was a child being yelled at by the teacher and had he not recorded it, his momma would have never known that this sweet lady that they go to church with is degrading her child like that,” one mother said.
Statements like these prompted responses from teachers and other parents who urged the skeptical attendees to be more trusting or to make sure the district has updated contact information for them in case school officials need to reach parents during an emergency.
“I think we have to trust the people watching over our children,” said one of the few fathers who spoke. “When I grew up, what the teacher said was gold.”
One teacher asked the audience, “Will you trust us?”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post ‘Will you trust us?’: JPS plan for stricter cellphone policy makes some parents anxious 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 balanced report on Jackson Public Schools’ proposed stricter cellphone policy without taking a clear ideological stance. It fairly conveys the perspectives of school officials emphasizing discipline and safety, alongside parental concerns about communication and emergency access. The tone remains neutral, focusing on factual details such as policy changes, reasons behind them, and community reactions. While it includes some skepticism from parents and responses from district staff, the language does not endorse or oppose either side. Overall, the coverage adheres to neutral, factual reporting by presenting multiple viewpoints without editorializing.
Mississippi Today
Hospitals see danger in Medicaid spending cuts
Mississippi hospitals could lose up to $1 billion over the next decade under the sweeping, multitrillion-dollar tax and policy bill President Donald Trump signed into law last week, according to leaders at the Mississippi Hospital Association.
The leaders say the cuts could force some already-struggling rural hospitals to reduce services or close their doors.
The law includes the largest reduction in federal health and social safety net programs in history. It passed 218-214, with all Democrats voting against the measure and all but five Republicans voting for it.
In the short term, these cuts will make health care less accessible to poor Mississippians by making the eligibility requirements for Medicaid insurance stiffer, likely increasing people’s medical debt.
In the long run, the cuts could lead to worsening chronic health conditions such as diabetes and obesity for which Mississippi already leads the nation, and making private insurance more expensive for many people, experts say.
“We’ve got about a billion dollars that are potentially hanging in the balance over the next 10 years,” Mississippi Hospital Association President Richard Roberson said Wednesday during a panel discussion at his organization’s headquarters.
“If folks were being honest, the entire system depends on those rural hospitals,” he said.
Mississippi’s uninsured population could increase by 160,000 people as a combined result of the new law and the expiration of Biden-era enhanced subsidies that made marketplace insurance affordable – and which Trump is not expected to renew – according to KFF, a health policy research group.
That could make things even worse for those who are left on the marketplace plans.
“Younger, healthier people are going to leave the risk pool, and that’s going to mean it’s more expensive to insure the patients that remain,” said Lucy Dagneau, senior director of state and local campaigns at the American Cancer Society.
Among the biggest changes facing Medicaid-eligible patients are stiffer eligibility requirements, including proof of work. The new law requires able-bodied adults ages 19 to 64 to work, do community service or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month to qualify for, or keep, Medicaid coverage and federal food aid.
Opponents say qualified recipients could be stripped of benefits if they lose a job or fail to complete paperwork attesting to their time commitment.
Georgia became the case study for work requirements with a program called Pathways to Coverage, which was touted as a conservative alternative to Medicaid expansion.
Ironically, the 54-year-old mechanic chosen by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to be the face of the program got so fed up with the work requirements he went from praising the program on television to saying “I’m done with it” after his benefits were allegedly cancelled twice due to red tape.
Roberson sent several letters to Mississippi’s congressional members in weeks leading up to the final vote on the sweeping federal legislation, sounding the alarm on what it would mean for hospitals and patients.
Among Roberson’s chief concerns is a change in the mechanism called state directed payments, which allows states to beef up Medicaid reimbursement rates – typically the lowest among insurance payors. The new law will reduce those enhanced rates to nearly as low as the Medicare rate, costing the state at least $500 million and putting rural hospitals in a bind, Roberson told Mississippi Today.
That change will happen over 10 years starting in 2028. That, in conjunction with the new law’s one-time payment program called the Rural Health Care Fund, means if the next few years look normal, it doesn’t mean Mississippi is safe, stakeholders warn.
“We’re going to have a sort of deceiving situation in Mississippi where we look a little flush with cash with the rural fund and the state directed payments in 2027 and 2028, and then all of a sudden our state directed payments start going down and that fund ends and then we’re going to start dipping,” said Leah Rupp Smith, vice president for policy and advocacy at the Mississippi Hospital Association.
Even with that buffer time, immediate changes are on the horizon for health care in Mississippi because of fear and uncertainty around ever-changing rules.
“Hospitals can’t budget when we have these one-off programs that start and stop and the rules change – and there’s a cost to administering a program like this,” Smith said.
Since hospitals are major employers – and they also provide a sense of safety for incoming businesses – their closure, especially in rural areas, affects not just patients but local economies and communities.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is the only Democrat in Mississippi’s congressional delegation. He voted against the bill, while the state’s two Republican senators and three Republican House members voted for it. Thompson said in a statement that the new law does not bode well for the Delta, one of the poorest regions in the U.S.
“For my district, this means closed hospitals, nursing homes, families struggling to afford groceries, and educational opportunities deferred,” Thompson said. “Republicans’ priorities are very simple: tax cuts for (the) wealthy and nothing for the people who make this country work.”
While still colloquially referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the name was changed by Democrats invoking a maneuver that has been used by lawmakers in both chambers to oppose a bill on principle.
“Democrats are forcing Republicans to delete their farcical bill name,” Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York said in a statement. “Nothing about this bill is beautiful — it’s a betrayal to American families and it’s undeserving of such a stupid name.”
The law is expected to add at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, according to the most recent estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Hospitals see danger in Medicaid spending cuts 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 reports on the negative impacts of a major federal tax and policy bill on Medicaid funding and rural hospitals in Mississippi. While it presents factual details and statements from stakeholders, the tone and framing emphasize the harmful consequences for vulnerable populations and health care access, aligning with concerns typically raised by center-left perspectives. The article highlights opposition by Democrats and critiques the bill’s priorities, particularly its effect on poor and rural communities, suggesting sympathy toward social safety net preservation. However, it maintains mostly factual reporting without overt partisan language, resulting in a moderate center-left bias.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Class of ’25
The MSHOF will induct eight new members on Aug 2. Rick Cleveland has covered them all and he and son Tyler talk about what makes them all special.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Podcast: The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Class of '25 appeared first on mississippitoday.org
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