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The purposefully broken lawmaking process in Jackson 

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2 years ago

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The purposefully broken lawmaking process in Jackson 

by Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today
January 16, 2023

Note: This analysis was first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to legislative analyses and up-to-date information about what’s happening under the Capitol dome.

Think back to grade school and Mississippi civics lessons about our representative form of government. The steps of passing laws at the state level are simple, uniform and designed to give voters — not the representatives they elect — all the power:

  1. Voters of all backgrounds and viewpoints in every area of the state elect lawmakers to represent their interests in Jackson.
  1. Those lawmakers join their colleagues at the Capitol once a year to partake in a very detailed lawmaking and budgeting process designed to give everyone an equal shot at passing or debating bills.
  1. That lawmaking process is completely open to the public, ensuring complete transparency and that those representatives are, indeed, representing the voting public’s interests — that nothing untoward is happening behind closed doors.
  1. Bills are passed into law based on a majority vote (or three-fifths vote for spending bills), ensuring that at least a majority of people across Mississippi have a true representative say in the lawmaking process.

What a great way to do the public’s business, right? Unfortunately, in Mississippi, this civics lesson is nothing more than a farce — a bright-eyed fantasy about how things perhaps should work. Many understand how broken the legislative process has become in Washington, but it’s arguably worse in Jackson.

The reality is that it’s never worked the way we’ve been taught. And a progressively more broken system of lawmaking has been implemented over the past 12 years by Republican legislative leaders who, with sweeping rules changes and unchecked power grabs, have created the grandest illusion in state politics: that our old civics lesson is reality.

Here’s how lawmaking really works inside your state Capitol:

  1. Voters in every area of the state do elect lawmakers, but the districts are carefully drawn by Republican leaders every 10 years to ensure that only Republican voters’ beliefs are represented at the Capitol — that a GOP supermajority (three-fifths of both the House and Senate) have votes to pass any bill they want and can maintain complete power in Jackson. This doesn’t just suppress the ideals of Democrats across the state, but it also hurts Republicans who represent more moderate or more conservative districts than the GOP establishment leadership.
  1. The specific lawmaking process still on the books has been completely tossed aside for a newer, unwritten process. Are you a Democratic lawmaker? You’re completely powerless inside the Capitol and your views mean nothing. Are you a Republican representing a more moderate district with voters who disagree with a lot of things the most conservative party leaders believe? You’re even more powerless at the Capitol. Major pieces of legislation typically aren’t unveiled until the eleventh hour, and Republican leaders use hard deadlines to give rank-and-file members of both parties virtually no time to read or understand what they’re voting on. If they don’t vote with leadership, the leadership will punish them by further shutting them out of the process.
  1. The brunt of the lawmaking process is nearly exclusively conducted behind closed doors, meaning voters are usually unaware of what business their elected representatives are truly conducting. If anyone in the general public wants to know what ideas or proposed legislation their city council members, their mayor or even their state governor is writing or sharing with colleagues, they can request and receive those records. But not state lawmakers, who have long exempted themselves from their own public records laws. What’s worse, a recent Ethics Commission opinion says that lawmakers are not bound to the Open Meetings Act, a state law that mandates elected officials conduct public business in public. House Republicans have, for years, unabashedly met behind closed doors to debate and even vote on major legislation that they’re then expected to pass in public a few minutes later. Senate leaders, too, have gotten used to operating in secrecy in recent years, particularly during the conference committee process late in the session when the most important bills are debated by just six lawmakers behind closed doors.
  1. Bills are, indeed, passed into law based on a majority vote (or three-fifths vote for spending bills), but Republicans in both chambers are often expected to vote “yea” even if they don’t know what is in the bills. Typically the biggest, most impactful bills are rushed — stuffed down the throats of rank-and-file lawmakers of both parties who were purposefully kept out of the writing and debating process. In effect, even the majority of Mississippians represented by that Republican majority could not get adequate answers about bills from their representatives if they tried. And if they’re really being honest, many Republican lawmakers would admit after voting bills into law that they didn’t agree with the bill’s premise or wish they would have had more time to better understand the effects.

Don’t just take it from me. Take it from a two-term Republican lawmaker who recently announced his retirement and has decided to get honest with his constituents about what the Mississippi Legislature has become.

In a harrowing Jan. 10 email to his constituents, GOP state Rep. Dana Criswell wholly concedes that the secretive process from House Republican leadership has stripped power from the public. The purpose of Criswell’s email, in fact, is to ask the public to help him and his Republican colleagues read bills because they aren’t given enough time. Seriously. Here’s how his email begins:

A common complaint among legislators is a lack of time to actually read bills. The tactic used by leadership in nearly every legislative body is to overwhelm legislators so they don’t know what is in the bills. This leaves legislators simply following leadership and voting however they are told. One term used in the Mississippi House is “vote bottom right.” If you look at the voting board in the House, you will see “Speaker” at the bottom right. Many legislators simply look at what the Speaker is doing and vote with him.

When faced with over 2,500 bills during the 3 month legislative session, committee chairmen who refuse to provide agendas for bills being considered and a Speaker who regularly suspends the rules and brings up bills for a vote in hours instead of days, legislators are left voting for bills they have never read. Unfortunately, a large majority of legislators just don’t care because they are too busy going to dinner and living the high life off of a lobbyist to spend time reading bills and making informed decisions. But there are a few of us who believe it is our job to be informed and make the best decision possible before casting our vote.

When I first arrived at the Mississippi legislature, I was determined to read bills and know what I was voting for or against. I spent hours every night reading bills that were assigned to my committees only to find out the chairman wasn’t considering any of the bills I had read.

Experience helped me prepare. I learned to eliminate some bills authored by Democrats that were never going to pass and I learned to speed read bills by finding the underlined portions which indicate new language to a code section of law. But none of this solved the problem and completely helped me make informed decisions.

So, I made an agreement with a couple of other legislators to divide the bills among ourselves. We would meet once or twice a week to discuss and inform each other about the bills we had read. While this method helped, we were still behind and found it impossible to read everything we needed to read. I’m pretty sure one of us made a statement similar to, “Reading these bills is a full-time job.”

– GOP Rep. Dana Criswell in a Jan. 10, 2023, email to his constituents.

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, in his first term as president of the Senate, deserves credit with all this. He sees the broken system clearer than anyone. He inherited a Senate in 2020 that had been ruled for the previous eight years by now-Gov. Tate Reeves, who worked alongside current Speaker of the House Philip Gunn to create this more extreme way of doing things.

Since Hosemann took office, though, he’s implemented several changes to increase transparency like live-streaming committee meetings, halting closed door Senate Republican Caucus meetings that had become commonplace under Reeves’ leadership, and asking Senate committee chairs to publicly post their agendas at least 24 hours in advance. Hosemann has publicly floated reforms to the rushed budgeting process, the absolute epitome of the backwards process laid out above, when no more than six Republican lawmakers decide how to appropriate $7 billion in one single weekend every year.

Despite Hosemann’s best efforts, Senate leaders are still operating in the secretive system that Reeves helped build and are still having to contend with Gunn and his House leaders’ open flaunting of the old civics lesson.

Democrats, of course, have no voice whatsoever in the lawmaking process. For decades now, they’ve decried this system and have filed numerous bills to improve legislative workflow and transparency. But proof positive of their complete lack of influence: In the past 12 legislative sessions, none of those bills have even been considered or debated in Republican-led committees, let alone passed into law.

The losers of this broken system, of course, are everyday Mississippians. Because only a handful of Republican lawmakers have all the power, there’s no space for compromise or productive debate of legislation that affects every single resident for generations to come. Because these leaders operate and thrive in secrecy, Mississippians cannot know the true intentions of the ones in power, and there’s no way of knowing which lobbyists or out-of-state interest groups may have direct influence over what gets passed into law.

And, in turn, Mississippians cannot make truly informed decisions at the polls every four years.

So the brokenness continues. And it continues. And it continues. And it continues.

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

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Mississippi Today

Jackson’s performing arts venue Thalia Mara Hall is now open

Published

22 hours ago

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June 30, 2025

By

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-06-30 17:29:00


Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson has reopened after over 10 months of closure due to mold, asbestos, and air conditioning issues. Outgoing Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba celebrated the venue’s reopening as a significant cultural milestone. The hall closed last August and recently passed inspection after extensive remediation. About \$5 million in city and state funds were invested to bring it up to code. Some work remains, including asbestos removal from the fire curtain beam and installing a second air-conditioning chiller, so seating capacity is temporarily reduced to 800. Event bookings will start in the fall when full capacity is expected.

by Maya Miller, Mississippi Today
June 30, 2025

After more than 10 months closed due to mold, asbestos and issues with the air conditioning system, Thalia Mara Hall has officially reopened. 

Outgoing Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba announced the reopening of Thalia Mara Hall during his final press conference held Monday on the arts venue’s steps. 

“Today marks what we view as a full circle moment, rejoicing in the iconic space where community has come together for decades in the city of Jackson,” Lumumba said. “Thalia Mara has always been more than a venue. It has been a gathering place for people in the city of Jackson. From its first class ballet performances to gospel concerts, Thalia Mara Hall has been the backdrop for our city’s rich cultural history.” 

Thalia Mara Hall closed last August after mold was found in parts of the building. The issues compounded from there, with malfunctioning HVAC systems and asbestos remediation. On June 6, the Mississippi State Fire Marshal’s Office announced that Thalia Mara Hall had finally passed inspection. 

“We’re not only excited to have overcome many of the challenges that led to it being shuttered for a period of time,” Lumumba said. “We are hopeful for the future of this auditorium, that it may be able to provide a more up-to-date experience for residents, inviting shows that people are able to see across the world, bringing them here to Jackson. So this is an investment in the future.”

In total, Emad Al-Turk, a city contracted engineer and owner of Al-Turk Planning, estimates that $5 million in city and state funds went into bringing Thalia Mara Hall up to code. 

The venue still has work to be completed, including reinstalling the fire curtain. The beam in which the fire curtain will be anchored has asbestos in it, so it will have to be remediated. In addition, a second air-conditioning chiller needs to be installed to properly cool the building. Until it’s installed, which could take months, Thalia Mara Hall will be operating at a lower seating capacity of about 800. 

“Primarily because of the heat,” Al-Turk said. “The air conditioning would not be sufficient to actually accommodate the 2,000 people at full capacity, but starting in the fall, that should not be a problem.”

Al-Turk said the calendar is open for the city to begin booking events, though none have been scheduled for July. 

“We’re very proud,” he said. “This took a little bit longer than what we anticipated, but we had probably seven or eight different contractors we had to coordinate with and all of them did a superb job to get us where we are today.”

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

The post Jackson’s performing arts venue Thalia Mara Hall is now open 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 straightforward report on the reopening of Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson, focusing on facts and statements from city officials without promoting any ideological viewpoint. The tone is neutral and positive, emphasizing the community and cultural significance of the venue while detailing the challenges overcome during renovations. The coverage centers on public investment and future prospects, without partisan framing or editorializing. While quotes from Mayor Lumumba and a city engineer highlight optimism and civic pride, the article maintains balanced, factual reporting rather than advancing a political agenda.

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Mississippi Today

‘Hurdles waiting in the shadows’: Lumumba reflects on challenges and triumphs on final day as Jackson mayor

Published

1 day ago

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June 30, 2025

By

mississippitoday.org – @ayewolfe – 2025-06-30 17:08:00


Chokwe Antar Lumumba reflected on his eight years as Jackson mayor during a final press conference outside the recently reopened Thalia Mara Hall. He praised his team and highlighted achievements like avoiding a state takeover of public schools, suing Siemens for faulty water meters, paving 144 streets, and a recent significant drop in crime. Lumumba acknowledged constant challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, water crises, a trash pickup strike, and a federal corruption indictment linked to a stalled hotel project. He confirmed he will not seek office again, returning to his private law practice as longtime state Sen. John Horhn prepares to take office.

by Anna Wolfe and Molly Minta, Mississippi Today
June 30, 2025

On his last day as mayor of Jackson, Chokwe Antar Lumumba recounted accomplishments, praised his executive team and said he has no plans to seek office again.

He spoke during a press conference outside of the city’s Thalia Mara Hall, which was recently cleared for reopening after nearly a year of remediation. The briefing, meant to give media members a peek inside the downtown theater, marked one of Lumumba’s final forays as mayor.

Longtime state Sen. John Horhn — who defeated Lumumba in the Democratic primary runoff — will be inaugurated as mayor Tuesday, but Lumumba won’t be present. Not for any contentious reason, the 42-year-old mayor noted, but because he returns to his private law practice Tuesday.

“I’ve got to work now, y’all,” Lumumba said. “I’ve got a job.”

Thalia Mara Hall’s presumptive comeback was a fitting end for Lumumba, who pledged to make Jackson the most radical city in America but instead spent much of his eight years in office parrying one emergency after another. The auditorium was built in 1968 and closed nearly 11 months ago after workers found mold caused by a faulty HVAC system – on top of broken elevators, fire safety concerns and vandalism.

“This job is a fast-pitched sport,” Lumumba said. “There’s an abundance of challenges that have to be addressed, and it seems like the moment that you’ve gotten over one hurdle, there’s another one that is waiting in the shadows.” 

Outside the theater Monday, Lumumba reflected on the high points of his leadership instead of the many crises — some seemingly self-inflicted — he faced as mayor. 

He presided over the city during the coronavirus pandemic and the rise in crime it brought, but also the one-two punch of the 2021 and 2022 water crises, exacerbated by the city’s mismanagement of its water plants, and the 18-day pause in trash pickup spurred by Lumumba’s contentious negotiations with the city council in 2023. 

Then in 2024, Lumumba was indicted alongside other city and county officials in a sweeping federal corruption probe targeting the proposed development of a hotel across from the city’s convention center, a project that has remained stalled in a 20-year saga of failed bids and political consternation. 

Slated for trial next year, Lumumba has repeatedly maintained his innocence. 

The city’s youngest mayor also brought some victories to Jackson, particularly in his first year in office. In 2017, he ended a furlough of city employees and worked with then-Gov. Phil Bryant to avoid a state takeover of Jackson Public Schools. In 2019, the city successfully sued German engineering firm Siemens and its local contractors for $89 million over botched work installing the city’s water-sewer billing infrastructure.

“I think that that was a pivotal moment to say that this city is going to hold people responsible for the work that they do,” Lumumba said. 

Lumumba had more time than any other mayor to usher in the 1% sales tax, which residents approved in 2014 to fund infrastructure improvements.

“We paved 144 streets,” he said. “There are residents that still are waiting on their roads to be repaved. And you don’t really feel it until it’s your street that gets repaved, but that is a significant undertaking.”

And under his administration, crime has fallen dramatically recently, with homicides cut by a third and shootings cut in half in the last year.

Lumumba was first elected in 2017 after defeating Tony Yarber, a business-friendly mayor who faced his own scandals as mayor. A criminal justice attorney, Lumumba said he never planned to seek office until the stunning death of his father, Chokwe Lumumba Sr., eight months into his first term as mayor in 2014.

“I can say without reservation, and unequivocally, we remember where we started. We are in a much better position than we started,” Lumumba said. 

Lumumba said he has sat down with Horhn in recent months, answered questions “as extensively as I could,” and promised to remain reachable to the new mayor.

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

The post 'Hurdles waiting in the shadows': Lumumba reflects on challenges and triumphs on final day as Jackson mayor 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 reports on outgoing Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s reflections without overt editorializing but subtly frames his tenure within progressive contexts, emphasizing his self-described goal to make Jackson “the most radical city in America.” The piece highlights his accomplishments alongside challenges, including public crises and a federal indictment, maintaining a factual tone yet noting contentious moments like labor disputes and governance issues. While it avoids partisan rhetoric, the focus on social justice efforts, infrastructure investment, and crime reduction, as well as positive framing of Lumumba’s achievements, aligns with a center-left perspective that values progressive governance and accountability.

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Mississippi Today

Feds unfreeze $137 million in Mississippi education money

Published

1 day ago

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June 30, 2025

By

mississippitoday.org – @devnabose – 2025-06-30 15:37:00


The federal government is restoring $137 million in pandemic relief education funds to Mississippi schools, reversing a prior freeze linked to Trump-era spending cuts. Initially, states had until March 2026 to use the money, but the funds were withheld after the pandemic was declared over. After a lawsuit by Democratic-led states and injunctive orders favoring those states, the U.S. Department of Education decided to reinstate funding uniformly to all states, including Mississippi. School districts can now request access to these funds for projects such as tutoring, counseling, and construction. The litigation continues, so the funding status could change again.

by Devna Bose, Mississippi Today
June 30, 2025

The federal government is restoring $137 million in education funds to Mississippi schools.

The U.S. Department of Education notified states last week that it would reinstate pandemic relief funds. The decision comes less than three months after the federal government revoked billions nationwide as part of Trump administration efforts to cut government spending. 

State education agencies and school districts originally had until March 2026 to spend the money, but the federal government claimed that because the pandemic was over, they had no use for the money. 

That March 2026 deadline has been reinstated following a series of injunctive orders. 

A coalition of Democratic-led states sued the federal government in April over the decision to withhold the money. Then, a federal judge granted plaintiff states injunctive orders in the case, which meant those states could continue spending their COVID-relief dollars while other states remained restricted.

But the education department decided that wasn’t fair, wrote Secretary Linda McMahon in a letter dated June 26, so the agency was restoring the money to all states, not just the ones involved in the lawsuit. 

“The original intent of the policy announced on March 28 was to treat all states consistently with regards to safeguarding and refocusing their remaining COVID-era grant funding on students,” she wrote. “The ongoing litigation has created basic fairness and uniformity problems.”

The Mississippi Department of Education notified school districts about the decision on Friday. 

In the meantime, schools and states have been requesting exemptions for individual projects, though many from across the country have been denied. 

Eleven Mississippi school districts had submitted requests to use the money to fund services such as tutoring and counseling, according to records requested by Mississippi Today, though those are now void because of the federal government’s decision. 

Starting immediately, school districts can submit new requests to the state education department to draw down their federal allocation.

Mississippi Today previously reported that about 70 school districts were relying on the federal funds to pay for a range of initiatives, including construction projects, mental health services and literacy programs. 

In 2023, almost half of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, pandemic relief money allocated to schools across the country, went to students’ academic, social, and emotional needs. A third went to operational and staff costs, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Education.

Though Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said that legislative leaders might consider helping agencies that were impacted by federal funding cuts, House Speaker Jason White said Monday that he did not have an appetite for directing state funds to pandemic-era programs. 

Small school districts were already feeling the impact of the federal government’s decision to rescind the money. In May, Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School Board voted to terminate a contract on a school construction project funded with federal dollars. 

The litigation is ongoing, so the funding could again be rescinded.

Clarification: A previous version of this article misstated the status of school districts’ pandemic relief money.

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

The post Feds unfreeze $137 million in Mississippi education money 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 primarily reports on the federal government’s decision to restore $137 million in education funds to Mississippi schools after a temporary freeze. It presents factual information about the timeline, legal actions, and responses from various state officials without adopting a partisan tone. The piece mentions the involvement of Democratic-led states suing the federal government and notes Republican-aligned efforts to cut spending, but does so in a balanced way focused on reporting events and statements rather than promoting a political viewpoint. The language remains neutral and factual, avoiding loaded or biased framing, making it a straightforward news report with centrist bias.

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