Mississippi Today

Mississippi moms and babies suffer disproportionately. Medicaid expansion could help.

Published

3 years ago

November 21, 2022

Mississippi moms and babies suffer disproportionately. Medicaid expansion could help.

by Isabelle Taft, Mississippi Today
November 21, 2022

Note: This article is part of Mississippi Today’s ongoing Mississippi Health Care Crisis project.Read more about the project by clicking here.

During her 14 years working as an OB-GYN in Greenville, Dr. Lakeisha Richardson has seen five patients diagnosed with breast cancer during their pregnancies.

Most of them did not have health insurance prior to pregnancy, so going to the doctor for annual checkups was neither affordable nor routine. They missed out on clinical screenings and the chance to learn whether they were at higher risk of breast cancer.

Pregnancy does not cause breast cancer, but it can make it grow and spread more quickly, and breast cancer associated with pregnancy has a lower survival rate. For Richardson’s patients without health insurance, pregnancy brought Medicaid coverage that allowed them to go to the doctor for prenatal visits, and that was when their cancer was diagnosed.

One of Richardson’s patients died from breast cancer a few weeks after giving birth.

“Legislators think, women are healthy, they’re going to have a baby, and they can come off Medicaid,” Richardson said. “They don’t think that other illnesses and disease processes can exist in pregnant women.”

Mississippi doctors like Richardson see thousands of patients every year who have no health insurance, and thus limited access to affordable health care, until they become pregnant and qualify for Medicaid. If the patient has a chronic condition like diabetes or hypertension, getting treatment during pregnancy is critical – but not necessarily sufficient to prevent problems like preterm delivery, low birth weight, birth defects, and even stillbirth.

Access to routine care prior to conception increases the chance a person can have a healthy pregnancy and delivery. But in Mississippi, where one in six women of reproductive age is uninsured, preconception health care is far from universal. Under current Medicaid eligibility policy, adult women can get coverage only when they are pregnant or have kids at home and very low household income.

“If they have a preexisting disease like diabetes or hypertension, if they’re uninsured they’ve probably been off their meds for a while, so they’ll come in with elevated blood pressure, elevated glucose that have been uncontrolled for months or years,” Richardson said. “If it takes them a while to get their Medicaid and they’re already late to prenatal care, they have growth restrictions for the baby.”

It’s no secret that Mississippi is a sick state. More than one in seven Mississippians are living with diabetes, a higher rate than almost any other state. More than 700,000 Mississippians have hypertension, and the state has the country’s highest rate of deaths due to high blood pressure, as well as the country’s highest adult obesity rate, at just under 40%.

But perhaps nowhere are the consequences of sickness – sickness that is largely preventable – more evident than in the unnecessary suffering of Mississippi’s mothers and babies.

The state has the country’s highest percentage of babies born at a low weight. It has the highest percentage of preterm deliveries, which can result in costly NICU stays and long-term health consequences. Mississippi has the country’s highest rate of stillbirth. And more babies here die before their first birthday than anywhere else in the U.S.

Nationally, the leading cause of infant mortality is birth defects. But in Mississippi, the causes are more preventable: premature birth and pregnancy or delivery complications as well as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Within each of these statistics, Black women and babies suffer much more than their white counterparts.

Expanding Medicaid would not on its own solve Mississippi’s maternal and infant health crisis, which State Health Officer Dr. Daniel P. Edney has identified as a top priority. Health insurance is not the same as access to health care, and access to health care alone is not enough to ensure all Mississippians have healthy food, opportunities to exercise, and safe neighborhoods.

But OB-GYNs interviewed across the state said that lack of access to health care prior to conception is a problem they see every day. They may see a patient get her diabetes or hypertension under control when she has Medicaid coverage during her pregnancy, only to lose coverage and return to self-managing her conditions. They won’t see her again unless she gets pregnant again, and then the process of treating her chronic condition must start all over again.

“We work really hard and optimize their diabetes during pregnancy, and then they’ll be a gap in care between and patients come back for the next pregnancy and it’s like we’re starting from square one again,” said Dr. Sarah Novotny, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

An analysis by the consulting firm Manatt found that expanded Medicaid eligibility to adults with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty line would likely cut enrollment in pregnancy Medicaid by about half – meaning that it would provide more consistent coverage and access to care for about 10,000 women each year who can currently have health insurance only during and right after their pregnancies.

Dr. Jaleen Sims has worked as an OB-GYN at Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center since 2019. The federally qualified health center offers services on a sliding scale, so it’s affordable for people without insurance.

“I serve the underserved population that experiences the most suboptimal outcomes , the highest comorbidity rates, the highest mortality rates – those are my patients,” she said.

She estimates that more than half of her patients who are pregnant with their first child have not had health insurance as adults before getting pregnant.

Medicaid offers full coverage for pregnant women with incomes 194% of the federal poverty level, or $4,603 monthly for a family of four. That ensures that low-income and working-class women can get health care during their pregnancies. About 60% of births in Mississippi are covered by Medicaid, the second-highest percentage in the country, after only Louisiana.

Hinds County has both the state’s largest number of Medicaid-covered births, at an average of 2,300 annually from 2016 to 2020, and one of the state’s highest per capita rates of pregnancies covered by Medicaid. Some people with pregnancy Medicaid have another form of insurance, too, but generally the rate of Medicaid coverage during pregnancy gives an indication of how many people lacked insurance before they conceived.

Sims sees patients with hypertension, diabetes, obesity, lupus – “those chronic medical conditions that you really want to have under very, very good control before you get pregnant.”

Diabetes is a good example of a condition that can cause problems during pregnancy– but doesn’t have to.

Sometimes Sims sees patients who got treatment for diabetes during a previous pregnancy, but stopped seeing going to the doctor when that coverage ended. Instead, they’ve tried to manage it on their own.

“Then before you know it, they’re out of the medication, they’re just kind of living,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Well, I don’t check my finger sticks, I don’t have my insulin, I don’t have my medicine. Now I don’t really know where I am at this point.’”

During pregnancy, doctors try to keep blood sugar tightly controlled. That becomes harder to accomplish when the patient’s condition isn’t well managed when they arrive for their first prenatal visit.

If blood sugar is elevated during the first 10 weeks when the fetus’s organs are developing, the risk of birth defects is higher, Novotny said, even if blood sugar is controlled later in the pregnancy.

“A lot of times women haven’t been in care, they find out they’re pregnant, sign up for Medicaid, and by the time they come to us, it’s often the end of the first trimester, when damage may already be done,” she said.

Spina bifida and heart problems are the most common birth defects associated with diabetes. People with diabetes are also at risk for preterm delivery.

Dr. Emily Johnson, an OB-GYN in the Jackson area, said it’s important for people to know that chronic conditions and risk factors during pregnancy can be managed with very good outcomes. Early communication between provider and patient is critical.

“I think them knowing that information helps them have a little autonomy that they can be responsible for their blood pressure and they know what they’re supposed to call me for,” she said. “Communicating about the risk can help them take a little ownership of it and in some way provide some reassurance.”

For many uninsured women in Mississippi, getting signed up for Medicaid is one of the first rituals of pregnancy. But getting approved is a hurdle that for some people can delay their prenatal care by days or weeks.

Providers said they largely see patients get approved within a month or so. A mistake on the paperwork, however, can delay approval.

Matt Westerfield, spokesperson at the Division of Medicaid, told Mississippi Today that according to a recent analysis by the Office of Eligibility, the average approval time for pregnancy Medicaid from Aug. 2021 to Aug. 2022 was about 24 days. That's slightly higher than the average approval time in 2021 for all eligibility categories of 20 days, according to documents Mississippi Today obtained through a records request.

Even a delay of a few weeks can make a difference, given the importance of early prenatal care. Dr. Kushna Damallie, an OB-GYN at The Woman’s Clinic in Clarksdale, said he would like to see a patient as soon as she misses a period. But that often doesn’t happen.

“One of the biggest hurdles we have in our practice is late prenatal care, no prenatal care, or insufficient prenatal care,” Dumallie said.

Westerfield told Mississippi Today that the Division of Medicaid doesn't track when women go to their first prenatal visit or what percentage take place during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Richardson said early prenatal care is particularly important for women with a condition called an incompetent cervix, in which weak cervical tissue can cause very early delivery. Black women are more at risk for this condition. One treatment to help ensure a successful delivery is a cervical cerclage, in which providers stitch the cervix closed, usually around 12 to 14 weeks of pregnancy. If that doesn’t happen in time, the risk of miscarriage is higher.

In August of this year, Richardson had a patient who was in the hospital because her water had broken well before viability. The patient had known she needed to get treatment for her incompetent cervix but had not been able to get an appointment early enough.

“She moved from another state, so she didn’t have her Mississippi Medicaid and so she couldn’t get in anywhere to be seen,” Richardson said.

OB/GYN Dr. Nina Ragunanthan poses for a portrait inside of Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou, Miss., Thursday, July 14, 2022.

While Medicaid expansion is a taboo topic among Republicans in the legislature, extending Medicaid coverage for postpartum women has bipartisan support. A measure to extend coverage from 60 days to 12 months postpartum passed the Senate resoundingly in the last session, before House Speaker Philip Gunn killed it.

Today, Mississippi is one of just two states that has neither expanded Medicaid eligibility nor extended postpartum coverage.

Senate Republicans including Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, who sponsored the measure, have vowed to reintroduce the measure in the next session, though Gunn still opposes it.

Gunn recently said he believed postpartum Medicaid extension would help only a few thousand women in Mississippi, referring to his calculation that only 60% of the 5,000 new births expected annually after the state’s abortion ban would be covered by the program and dismissing the 21,000 people already covered by pregnancy Medicaid each year.

When discussing crisis pregnancy centers, which already get a $3.5 million tax credit from the state and which Gunn wants to expand to $10 million, he offered no information about the number of people they serve and how, probably because that data is not being collected by the state.

Providers largely say they’d welcome any opportunity to lengthen the amount of time their patients have health insurance. Novotny, the maternal-fetal medicine specialist, said 12 months of coverage postpartum would give her patients a chance to control their diabetes for a longer period before becoming pregnant again.

Some providers were not aware of continuous coverage provisions during the pandemic. But those who knew about it said their patients benefited from longer access to care.

“They’ve been able to continue the management of their chronic diseases so that when they’re ready to get pregnant again, they are in a good place,” Sims said.

But postpartum Medicaid does nothing to improve access to health care before conception.

Some advocates are concerned that the conversation about postpartum Medicaid could distract from the need to address Mississippi’s health care crisis more broadly.

Nakeitra Burse, a public health consultant and advocate focused on maternal health, said some of the discussion of postpartum Medicaid seems to reflect a belief that pregnancy can be separated from the rest of a life.

“A person’s already experiencing obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and then you add pregnancy on top of that, then pregnancy also becomes a condition,” Burse said. “So you’re trying to treat all these things at one time, when people don’t even just have the opportunity to make the healthy decisions for themselves because they don’t have access to care.”

When patients do get access to care during pregnancy, making it to a doctor’s appointment isn’t as easy as it sounds.

“A lot of that decision making means: Do I miss work to go to the doctor? Do I go to the doctor over my child? It’s a lot of push and pull and give and take for the decision making that shouldn’t have to happen, if we had opportunity or access to quality health care.”

Dr. Nina Ragunanthan, an OB/GYN in Mound Bayou, pointed out that the focus on pregnancy and postpartum coverage, rather than expanding access to health care for everyone, implies that women are more deserving of care if they are giving birth than if they are not.

“I think it's really important not to just pigeonhole a woman as a child bearing vessel,” she said. “Access to care for that woman as an autonomous, independent person, regardless of whether she plans to get pregnant or not, is very important.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Indicted Jackson prosecutor’s latest campaign finance report rife with errors

Published

8 hours ago

July 18, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @ayewolfe – 2025-07-18 11:00:00

by Caleb Bedillion, The Marshall Project and Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today
July 18, 2025

Tangled finances, thousands in personal loans and a political contribution from a supposed investor group made up of undercover FBI informants — this was all contained in a months-late campaign finance report from Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens.

Owens, a second-term Democrat in Mississippi’s capital city region, is fighting federal bribery charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. At the same time, his recent campaign finance disclosure reflects a pair of transactions that correspond with key details in the government’s allegation that Owens took money from undercover informants to pay off a local official’s debt.

Regarding payments from Facility Solutions Team — the company name used in the FBI sting — to former Jackson City Councilwoman Angelique Lee, Owens allegedly stated the need to “clean it out,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in November.

“[L]ike we always do, we’ll put it in a campaign account, or directly wire it,” he said, the indictment claims. “[T]hat’s the only way I want the paper trail to look.”

Agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with Owens and other officials, and after his arraignment last year, Owens responded to the charges, saying, “The cherry-picked statements of drunken locker room banter is not a crime.”

Throughout 2024, a non-election year during which federal authorities allege Owens funneled thousands of dollars in bribes to Jackson’s city officials, Owens loaned his campaign more than $20,000, according to his campaign committee’s finance report. He’d won reelection in late 2023.

Owens and his attorneys did not respond to questions about his campaign finance report.

Owens’ report, filed May 30 – months late and riddled with errors – is the latest example of how Mississippi politicians can ignore the state’s campaign finance transparency laws while avoiding meaningful consequences. It’s a lax legal environment that has led to late and illegible reports, untraceable out-of-state money that defied contribution limits, and, according to federal authorities, public corruption with campaign finance accounts serving as piggy banks.

Enforcement duties are divided among many government bodies, including the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The commission’s executive director, Tom Hood, has long complained that the state’s campaign finance laws are confusing and ineffective.

“It’s just a mess,” Hood said.

Owens filed the annual report months past the Jan. 31 deadline, after reporting from The Marshall Project – Jackson revealed he had failed to do so. He paid a $500 fine in April.

He was also late filing in previous years, paying fines in some years and failing to pay the penalties in other years, according to records provided by the Ethics Commission.

The report, which Owens signed, is full of omissions or miscalculations, with no way to tell which is which. The cover sheet of the report provides the total amount of itemized contributions and disbursements for the year — $44,000 in and $36,500 out. But the body of the report lists the line-by-line itemizations for each, and when the Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today summed the individual itemizations, the totals didn’t match those on the cover sheet.

Based on the itemized spending detailed in the body of the report, Owens’ campaign should have thousands more in cash on hand than reported. In the report’s cover sheet, Owens also reported that he received more in itemized contributions during the year than he received in total contributions, which would be impossible to do.

While the secretary of state receives and maintains campaign finance reports, it has no obligation to review the reports and no authority to investigate their accuracy. Under state law, willfully filing a false campaign finance report is a misdemeanor. Charges, however, are rare.

Owens is the only local official in the federal bribery probe — which is set to go to trial next summer — who remains in office. The government alleged that Owens accepted $125,000 to split between him and two associates in late 2023 from a group of men he believed were vying for a development project in downtown Jackson. Owens accepted several thousand dollars more to funnel to public officials for their support of the project, the indictment alleges. The use of campaign accounts was an important feature of the alleged scheme, according to the indictment.

Owens divvied up $50,000 from Facility Solutions Team, or FST, into checks from various individuals or companies — allegedly meant to conceal the bribe — to former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s reelection campaign, the indictment charged.

Lumumba accepted the checks during a sunset cruise on a yacht in South Florida, the indictment alleged. His campaign finance report, filed earlier this year, reflected five $10,000 contributions near the date of the trip, with no mention of FST.

Lumumba, who lost reelection in April, has pleaded not guilty.

While the indictment accused Owens of saying that public officials use campaign accounts to finance their personal lives, state law prohibits the use of political contributions for personal use.

The indictment alleges Owens accepted $60,000 — some for the purpose of funneling to local politicians — from the men representing themselves as FST in the backroom of Owens’ cigar bar on Feb. 13, 2024. On his campaign finance report, he listed a $12,500 campaign contribution from FST two days later, the same day the indictment alleges he paid off $10,000 of former Councilwoman Lee’s campaign debt. Lee pleaded guilty to charges related to the alleged bribery scheme in 2024.

Also on Feb. 15, 2024, the campaign finance report Owens filed shows a $10,000 payment to 1Vision, a printing company that used to go by the name A2Z Printing, for the purpose of “debt retirement.” Lee had her city paycheck garnished starting in 2023 to pay off debts to A2Z Printing, according to media reports. No mention of Lee was made in the campaign finance report filed by Owens. The printing company did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaigns are allowed to contribute money to other campaigns or political action committees. If Owens’ committee used campaign funds to pay off debt owed by Lee’s campaign, the transaction should have been structured as a contribution to Lee’s campaign and reported as such by both campaigns, said Sam Begley, a Jackson-based attorney and election law expert who has advised candidates about their financial disclosures.

The alleged debt payoff on behalf of Lee is not the first time Owens has described transactions on his campaign finance filings in ways that may obscure how his campaign is spending money. Confusing or unclear descriptions of spending activity are common on campaign finance reports across the state.

Owens previously reported that in 2023, he paid $1,275 to a staff member in the district attorney’s office who also worked on his campaign. The payment was labeled a reimbursement, which Owens explained in a May email to The Marshall Project – Jackson was for expenditures this person made on behalf of the campaign, “such as meals for volunteers/workers, evening/weekend canvassers, and election day workers.”

State law requires campaigns to itemize all contributions and expenses over $200. Begley said he believes Owens’ committee should have itemized any payments over $200 made by anyone on behalf of the campaign.

Upfront payments, with the expectation of repayment by the campaign, might also be considered a loan, according to a spokesperson for the secretary of state. Campaigns are barred from spending money to repay undocumented loans.

The state Ethics Commission has addressed undocumented loan repayments in several opinions, outlining the required documentation to make repayments legal.

Since 2018, the Ethics Commission has had the power to issue advisory opinions upon request to help candidates and campaigns sort through laws that Hood, the commission’s executive director, said aren’t always clear.

The commission has issued just six opinions in seven years.

“I was surprised in the first few years that there weren’t more,” Hood said. “But now it seems to be clear that for whatever reason, most people don’t think they need advice.”

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

The post Indicted Jackson prosecutor's latest campaign finance report rife with errors 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

The article critically examines the conduct of Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, a Democrat, and highlights systemic weaknesses in Mississippi’s campaign finance laws. While the reporting is grounded in factual evidence, legal documents, and expert commentary, the tone leans toward exposing flaws in enforcement and transparency—issues typically emphasized by center-left or reform-oriented journalism. The article does not display partisan rhetoric or ideological framing beyond its focus on accountability and legal integrity. Its publication by Mississippi Today and The Marshall Project, both known for investigative work with slight progressive leanings, further supports a Center-Left classification.

Mississippi Today

Whooping cough cases increase in Mississippi

Published

23 hours ago

July 17, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-07-16 11:25:00

by Gwen Dilworth, Mississippi Today
July 16, 2025

The Mississippi State Department of Health issued an alert Wednesday that cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, are climbing in the state.

The year-to-date number of cases in Mississippi ballooned to 80 as of July 10. That compares to 49 cases in all of 2024.

No whooping cough deaths have been reported. Ten people have been hospitalized related to whooping cough, seven of whom were children under 2 years old.

Cases have largely been clustered in northeast Mississippi. The region accounts for 40% of cases statewide.

The nation has also seen rising rates of whooping cough, though cases have been climbing less steeply than in Mississippi. About 15,000 whooping cough cases have been reported nationwide this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The highly contagious respiratory illness is named for the “whooping” sound people make when gasping for air after a coughing fit. It may begin like a common cold but can last for weeks or months. Babies younger than 1 year are at greatest risk for getting whooping cough, and can have severe complications that often require hospitalization.

Whooping cough cases fell in Mississippi after the COVID-19 pandemic began, but have since rebounded. This is likely due to people now taking fewer mitigation measures, like masking and remote learning, State Epidemiologist Renia Dotson said at the state Board of Health meeting July 9.

The majority of cases – 76% – have occurred in children. Of the 73 cases reported in people who were old enough to be vaccinated, 28 were unvaccinated. Of those 28 people, 23 were children.

“Vaccines are the best defense against vaccine preventable diseases,” State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said after the State Board of Health meeting.

Mississippi has long had the highest child vaccination rates in the country. But the state’s kindergarten vaccination rates have dropped since a federal judge ruled in 2023 that parents can opt out of vaccinating their children for school on account of religious beliefs.

The pertussis vaccination is administered in a five-dose series for children under 7 and booster doses for older children and adults. The health department recommends that pregnant women, grandparents and family or friends that may come in close contact with an infant should get booster shots to ensure they do not pass the illness to children, particularly those too young to be vaccinated.

Immunity from pertussis vaccination wanes over time, and there is not a routine recommendation for boosters.

State health officials also encourage vaccination against other childhood illnesses, like measles. While Mississippi has not reported any measles cases, Texas has had recent outbreaks.

The Mississippi Health Department offers vaccinations to children and uninsured adults at county health departments.

Correction 7/16/25: This story has been updated to reflect that the age of the seven hospitalized children is under 2 years old.

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

The post Whooping cough cases increase in Mississippi appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article presents a straightforward, fact-based account of rising whooping cough cases in Mississippi without ideological framing. It cites official sources such as the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, offering context, statistics, and public health recommendations. While it mentions a 2023 federal court ruling that allowed religious exemptions to vaccinations—a potentially contentious topic—it does so factually without editorializing or assigning blame. The overall tone remains neutral and informative, aligning with public health reporting rather than political advocacy.

Mississippi Today

Driver’s license office moves to downtown Jackson

Published

1 day ago

July 17, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-07-17 12:31:00

by Simeon Gates, Mississippi Today
July 17, 2025

The driver’s license office in Jackson has moved downtown as the Mississippi Department of Public Safety prepares to shift its headquarters from the capital city to suburban Rankin County.

The department last month announced it was closing the license office that had operated for decades next to its headquarters just off Interstate 55 at Woodrow Wilson Avenue, near the VA Medical Center.

The new office is at 430 State St., near Jackson’s main post office and a few blocks from the Capitol.

A logo marks the main entry of a driver’s license office in downtown Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, July 8, 2025.

“This location provides easier access for those who live and work in the area and ensures we can continue offering vital driver services in a more convenient and accessible space within the city of Jackson,” said Bailey Martin, spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety.

Mississippi has 35 driver’s licenses offices. The new Jackson office is in a former car dealership – an all-white building with floor-to-ceiling windows that fill the space with sunlight. On Wednesday, customers sat on black benches, chatting or scrolling on their phones while waiting to be called up to get or renew a license.

Carlos Lakes of Yazoo City speaks after renewing a driver’s license in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.

Carlos Lakes, 34, from Yazoo City, said he first went to the Richland office that issues commercial driver’s licenses but couldn’t get what he needed there. He said he then went to the old office on Woodrow Wilson and saw a note on the door showing the office had moved.

“So, it’s been about two hours of running around,” said Lakes, a truck driver.

He said the customer service at the new office was good, aside from the long wait time.

Medical student Seth Holton, 22, had a similar experience. He drove in from Flora, in Madison County, and went to the Woodrow Wilson location before finding the new office. He said it was his first time getting his license renewed.

Seth Holton of Flora waits to renew his driver’s license in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.

“I think it looks nice,” Holton said of the new location. “I think it’s organized. There’s good seating. It’s pretty quick, for the most part.”

Student Marquerion Brown, 19, posed for photos with a large cardboard frame of a driver’s license in the corner of the new office. He’d just passed his driver’s test for the first time.

“I’m just lucky and thankful to get this one this time,” Brown said. He hadn’t decided where he wanted to drive first. “I got a lot of places in mind.”

Marquerion Brown speaks after receiving his driver’s license in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday, July 17, 2025.

The Department of Public Safety headquarters will open in Pearl within the next year, near the state’s crime lab, fire academy and emergency management agency.

Martin said the new headquarters will allow the department to have its divisions in one place – the highway patrol, bureau of investigation, bureau of narcotics, homeland security office and commercial transportation enforcement.

“As such, this move will enhance operational efficiency with other public safety partners, improve interagency collaboration, and position the department for future growth,” Martin said.

The headquarters move has been in the making for over five years. Public safety officials said the old building on Woodrow Wilson fell into disrepair after years of neglect.

Sen. David Blount asks questions during a TANF hearing at the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, December 15, 2022.

Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, was part of a group of lawmakers who proposed moving the headquarters to a different location inside Jackson.

“I personally think that the state government should be based in the state capital,” he said.

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

The post Driver's license office moves to downtown Jackson appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article from *Mississippi Today* offers a factual and neutral report on the relocation of the Jackson driver’s license office and the broader headquarters move by the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. It includes quotes from officials and everyday citizens without editorializing or promoting a specific viewpoint. The inclusion of Sen. David Blount’s comment presents a mild political contrast, but it is balanced and not framed in a confrontational or ideological way. The tone remains focused on public service logistics and community impact rather than political narrative.