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State Auditor Shad White ordered Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Executive Director John Dowdy to pay back $30,122 to taxpayers over compensatory time buy-backs and a clothing allowance.

The auditor’s office issued the routine compliance audit Thursday and the crux of why Dowdy will have to pay back the money is whether he is a sworn law enforcement officer. The MBN says that because he was sworn in as director, he is able to enforce the state’s laws and carry a firearm. 

The auditor’s office says that he hasn’t met the certification standards granted by the Board of Law Enforcement Standards and Training to be considered a law enforcement officer. He never graduated from a law enforcement academy and was supposed to complete his certification a year from his hiring on November 1, 2016.

A formal finding by the MBN and the Department of Public Safety on Dowdy’s status is due a week from the audit and any amounts due to the state would have to be repaid in a week. If the MBN finds that Dowdy is not a sworn law enforcement officer, the DPS will have to reimburse the state for $313,261 for employing the director after he failed to receive certification. 

Dowdy ordered his staff to buy compensatory time on five separate occasions. This is paid time off earned for working past traditional work areas. Agencies are allowed to pay employees for compensatory time in lieu of time off from work.

Sworn law enforcement officers are allowed up to 300 hours, according to DPS regulations, of compensatory time, while other, regular employees are limited to 100 hours. Dowdy, from May 31, 2017 until December 14, 2018, accrued 529 hours of leave, 129 hours more than the standard of a law enforcement officer and 429 more than those for regular employees.

According to state law, the public safety commissioner (MBN is a branch of the DPS which includes the state’s crime lab and state trooper force) has to authorize the buy backs and only one of those times did Public Safety Commissioner Marshall Fisher provide permission via a memo. 

The buybacks added up to $27,662 and were done over the objections of several on the MBN staff. 

Dowdy also spent $2,450 in state funds on clothing, which was against the law according to the audit since he isn’t a certified law enforcement officer. Law enforcement officers are authorized a clothing allowance by state law.

Dowdy’s spending included:

The auditor’s office also chastised the department for its accounting practices, reporting that MBN didn’t perform a proper monthly reconciliation for the nine bank accounts the agency holds outside of the state treasury. 

Also, the department bought higher-grade gasoline on 10 percent of purchases, which goes against state regulations, which only allows regular unleaded or diesel fuel to be bought with the state Fuelman credit cards.

Five MBN employees were allowed to use agency vehicles for commuting, including Dowdy and the department didn’t record fringe benefits for the employees. This added up to $3,720 in fringe benefits in 2018.

The audit isn’t the only controversy weathered by the agency in recent months.

Former MBN chief of staff and counsel Allison Killebrew resigned on October 8. In her resignation letter, she said “I lost in faith in your (Dowdy’s) ability to do the right thing for the employees of MBN and the state of Mississippi many months ago.”

It has become increasingly clear that our economy is undergoing a seismic shift, similar to that previously seen during the industrial revolution. Once again, technology is fundamentally changing how we do business as a society.

Technology stocks are on pace for a record year. For the past decade, the tech sector has led the bull market. While the overall S&P 500 has enjoyed a 24 percent increase in 2019, the S&P’s tech sector is on pace for a 41 percent gain this year. Big tech controversies, private data use, tariffs, and free speech debates aside, investors are convinced that consumer demand, creativity, competition, and private capital will continue to feed strong revenue and earnings. 

While certain sectors in tech will do better than others and some tech stocks will surely falter, it is clear that tech innovation is going to be a big part of our future, no matter where we live. Why should this matter to Mississippi or Jackson? Because nothing has the potential to dramatically improve our economy like tech innovation. 

Last month, a conference on technology innovation was held in Jackson. The conference featured AOL founder and billionaire Steve Case, who shared the stage with Jackson’s own Jim Barksdale. They told some fascinating stories about their decades working together through the AOL’s acquisition of Netscape and the eventual merger with Time Warner. But the most valuable information came from Case. Now a venture capitalist, Case provided some sage advice about where he’s putting his money and why, and he gave Mississippi’s political leadership some very specific direction about the future.

Case recently announced the establishment of Rise of the Rest Seed Fund II, a venture capital fund led by his investment firm, Revolution. This is his second fund designed to support entrepreneurs, start-ups, and early stage tech companies in underserved areas in the United States. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also backs the fund along with a host of highly successful entrepreneurs, like Spanx founder Sara Blakely. Blakely says, “geography should not be the reason bight ideas don’t come to life.” 

Partly due to overvaluation in places like Silicon Valley and partly due to a wide distribution of talents and ideas across America, Case is looking in cities and states outside of the traditional tech incubation zones. According to Case, roughly 85 percent of all venture capital investments are made in three states – California, New York, and Massachusetts.

His message to the leaders in Mississippi was a hopeful one. He chided lawmakers to eschew the normal corporate welfare and incentive hunting competition and instead think about better ways to get sustainable economic growth – like encouraging tech innovation. 

He suggested policy makers in Mississippi should think about how to permit tech innovations, rather than how to protect incumbent industries. He spent some time discussing how tech innovation could lead to a faster economic recovery than anything the government could try to orchestrate. He even suggested a robust tech innovation sector in Mississippi could be the antidote to brain drain, causing a “boomerang effect,” bringing talented and ambitious Mississippians back to the Magnolia State for jobs, opportunities, and improved quality of life.

At the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, our job is to recommend evidence-based policy ideas to help our political leaders make prudent decisions. This is why we are beginning an effort to encourage leaders to adopt a “permissionless innovation” policy. We should welcome and encourage creative disruption and work to reap the benefits of technological progress. We must not let existing or new regulatory policy act as a barrier to tech innovation. We recognize that long-term economic growth and human flourishing necessitates the promotion rather than the diminution of technological innovation. 

To accomplish this, we ought to seek equally innovative policy solutions, which can jumpstart local entrepreneurship and economic growth. Our goal should be to build into our regulatory code a presumption of net good when dealing with new technologies and innovation. 

In so doing, it is our belief that we can energize the existing marketplace and encourage businesses and entrepreneurs to see Mississippi as a more friendly state for risk-taking and creative disruption…and perhaps encourage some of our best and brightest to come back home.

This editorial appeared in the Clarion Ledger on December 5, 2019.

Today, on December 5, in the year 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, officially ending the thirteen year nationwide prohibition on alcohol and leaving future regulation to the states. However, prohibition did not find its death in Mississippi until 1966, at which point it was the last dry state in the union.

Mississippi has a long history of attempting to control alcohol consumption. It was the first state to pass some form of prohibition in 1908, and then was the first state to ratify the 18th amendment, creating a federal prohibition in 1918.

While prohibition inspired some great blues songs and classic literary characters it was bad public policy. For years before 1966, many establishments openly sold alcohol to customers, and the state even placed a 10 percent tax on the sale of alcohol, essentially making a mockery of its own prohibition laws.

Public policy ought to be rational and easily comprehendible by the public. Our modern laws governing the control of alcohol are anything but that, and continue a long tradition of excess government control.

We have over empowered individual counties to define their own laws, and in so doing have created a chaotic state of regulation, difficult to understand by the average residential citizen, let alone internal and external businesses hoping to sell.

Furthermore, the state has retained an egregious amount of control of the distribution process. Mississippi has decided that, rather than allow private businesses to control the market, it will run a large warehouse in the central part of the state which will have a complete monopoly over the distribution of all spirits and wines.

As the Department of Revenue states on its own site, “the ABC imports, stores, and sells 2,850,000 cases of spirits and wines annually from its 211,000 square foot warehouse located in South Madison County Industrial Park.”

This warehouse consistently operates at capacity, and government leaders are considering a $35 million expansion. Perhaps our politicians ought to consider giving the free market a chance?

There is no reason that our government should be so deeply involved in controlling the distribution for a product. They hike up prices by a tremendous rate, limit access to the product, and determine which brands are allowed to sell in the state, leaving businesses in the dark and unable to control their own wares.

Private businesses are barred from distributing alcohol in Mississippi. While UberEats, DoorDash, and GrubHub have created thousands of jobs in other states through their delivery systems, our legislative leaders have shut down this opportunity for individuals to order alcohol with their delivery.

And while a variety of companies sell and ship wine, whiskey, and other alcoholic beverages around the country, our legislative leaders have determined that we shouldn’t have this freedom of access.

If you’re shopping for a Christmas gift, you might find yourself looking at a wine basket, such as those at Wine & Country. However, upon checkout you will be met with the embarrassing notification that your state is one of only three in the entire nation that completely bars the shipment of any wines.

The excess regulation has made Mississippi last in the nation for craft beer development. For comparison, craft brewers currently produce $150 per capita in Mississippi, while they produce $650 per capita in Vermont. Imagine the difference such an industry could make in our state. This is thousands of tangible new jobs which are being discouraged from coming into existence by our government.

Existing policies have led Mississippi to have the largest shadow economy in the nation (referring to the exchange of products that are not taxed or recorded) at 9.54 percent of GDP. Moonshine is either produced or is available in every single county, which many link to the strict regulation of the alcohol industry. Our egregious taxation of alcohol products displayed here by the Department of Revenue has encouraged many companies such as Costco and Trader Joes to avoid opening locations in the state due to the lack of revenue potential on alcoholic products.

Prohibition is alive and well in Mississippi. Our government has decided we apparently can’t be trusted to make basic purchasing decisions for ourselves, so they must control what alcoholic drinks we’re allowed to have access to, how we’re allowed to receive these drinks, and from whom we’re allowed to purchase these drinks.

Be not fooled by the government “do gooders” who proclaim that they carry out policies like this for our own protection. Too many of our political leaders refuse to give freedom a chance, and instead have decided that they know better than we do when it comes to running our lives.

The fact is that while Mississippi prides itself on having a relatively low income tax, it finds dozens of other ways to tax and control its citizens.

Companies are discouraged from entering into business in the state because we have established covert taxes which discourage entrepreneurial risk taking.

Mississippi controls, regulates, and taxes alcohol worse than New York or California, so imagine what other discrete ways it is shutting down job opportunities and discouraging new business.

The Mississippi Hemp Cultivation Task Force’s draft report released on in November that stops short of a specific policy recommendation for the legislature, but provides useful information for potential legislation.

Mississippi is one of only three states where hemp cultivation is illegal and the legislature could take up the issue in January, when it returns to Jackson for the annual regular session. 

Hemp is derived from strains of the cannabis sativa plant with low amounts (0.3 percent content or less) of the psychoactive substance in marijuana known as THC. The plant can be cultivated for its fiber, which can be used in insulation, rope, textiles, and other products. 

The seeds are also a good source of protein and are edible by humans or animals. The flowers of the plant can be used for cannabidiol, or CBD oil production with possible benefits still being studied by scientists both in Mississippi and nationwide.

The report admits that some states who began pilot hemp cultivation programs under the 2014 Farm Bill — such as Kentucky, Oregon, North Carolina and Virginia — are at “some advantage,” but would still have to reconcile their programs with draft federal regulations that came out on October 31.

These new rules govern hemp cultivation nationally after the2018 U.S. Farm Bill authorized the growing and sale of hemp. 

The report says that the state will have the advantage, as a possible late adopter of hemp cultivation, in having the benefit of other state’s experiences.

Economics

Hemp, according to the report, has some pitfalls when it comes to whether Mississippi farmers could effectively cultivate it for profit. 

Supply chains for hemp-related products are not mature, according to the report. Also, verification issues with keeping crops below the legal 0.3 percent THC threshold and what to do if a crop goes “hot” and tests over that standard.

The report also says Kentucky’s program quickly spawned 70 licensed processors. There is also a Charleston, Mississippi-based company, Kengro, which imports Kentucky hemp for processing to fiber for animal bedding products for Ecofibre, an Australian-based company that does business in both CBD oil and hemp fiber/seed markets.

Projections from the state’s two agricultural universities, Mississippi State and Alcorn State, suggest that fiber or grain production, and especially combined production, could offer an economically viable alternative to other staple Mississippi crops such as corn, cotton, and soybeans. Researchers used data from Kentucky and Missouri and adjusted it for Mississippi.

Growing hemp for grain and fiber would be the state’s most profitable crop next to cotton grown in the Delta.

The report also says that more states approving hemp production means supplies will increase while prices will drop.

Agronomy

According to the report, finding hemp strains that will grow in Mississippi’s climate will be a huge obstacle to cultivation and finding such strains could take several years.

Also, there are no approved pesticides or herbicides authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The report says much research still needs to be conducted on hemp, including:

Law enforcement and regulation

The report says that law enforcement personnel and canine officers are unable to discern the difference between marijuana and legal hemp except with laboratory analysis. 

Among the concerns about hemp cultivation include:

The report also says that since resources of state agencies needed for regulation are under stress, lawmakers much have a plan needed to “support the infrastructure needed to ensure public safety related to hemp cultivation and hemp products.”

The Speaker’s Commission on Public Policy held a half-day summit on the phenomena of brain drain in Mississippi.

The commission, organized by House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) in 2018, put on the event with panelists from the state’s universities, entrepreneurs and some from the economic development realm along with legislators. 

The goal was to find ways to keep young, college-educated Mississippians in state and lure other college graduates to the Magnolia State.

Like with a previous summit on human trafficking, Gunn said his goal is for the discussion to provide a framework for legislation in the upcoming session in January.

“Brain drain is something that’s been talked about a lot and I’m don’t know if I understand all of the facets of that and that’s what this day is about,” Gunn said. “It’s for us to not only understand the issues, but come forward with solutions.”

Bill Rayburn is the CEO of mTrade, a Mississippi-based company that has built a proprietary loan acquisition system that brings together data and risk analysis in one portal for mortgage transactions. The company employs 200 workers in three locations in Oxford, Tupelo and New York.

He said the state, as evidenced by a scorecard by Economic Modeling that ranked counties by their ability to attract talented workers, is not doing a good job of not only retaining talented graduates, but luring ones from out of state.

Lafayette County was the only one of the state’s smaller counties to be ranked in the top 100 nationally in the scorecard. Only large county, Madison, was ranked in the top 200.

Rayburn said the state could focus on generating entrepreneurship in agriculture technology and that the state needs a strategic economic plan that is focused, actionable, time dependent and measurable. He also said that improving the state as an incubator of entrepreneurship in the new, knowledge-based economy could be done with private funds, but would do so faster with an infusion of taxpayer dollars.

One thing proposed during a roundtable session that the state needs to change its policies of providing generous incentives to manufacturers to bring industry to the state. 

“What we see from an economic development standpoint, the days of chasing smokestacks are coming to an abrupt end,” said Ashley Edwards, the president and CEO of the Gulf Coast Business Council. “I think most folks in our profession realize that. The numbers of those projects are few and far between. We can’t run a 1995-centric economic development strategy for an economy that no longer exists.”

There was more criticism of the top-down mentality when it comes to economic development in Mississippi. 

While these policies helped land carmakers such as Nissan and Toyoto and tiremakers Continental and Yokohama, there have been some missteps such as the KiOR biofuels plant in Columbus (now defunct and sold for scrap), a pair of defunct solar panel manufacturing plants (Twin Creeks and Stion) and an electric car builder (Greentech Automotive) where taxpayers lost money on their “investments.”

From 2012 to 2017, taxpayers have spent $678 million in just MDA grants alone from 2012 to 2017, or about $19,765 per job.

“Our problem is we don’t have the capital,” said Jeffrey Rupp, the director of outreach and corporate engagement at Mississippi State University’s College of Business. “We spend $600 million on a tire plant, which is great and we need those jobs, but we’re turning out 100 new entrepreneurs per year and with one half of one percent of that, we could really do a lot more.”

State Rep. Trey Lamar (R-Senatobia) touted his tax credit plan to keep college graduates in the state that he says he’ll bring back this year. Lamar introduced the legislation in the past two sessions, but it died in the Senate both times after passing the House.

House Bill 816— also known as the Mississippi Educational Talent Recruitment Act — would’ve provide recent graduates (within two years) from a four-year university or a post-graduate program such as medical school who live and work in Mississippi a rebate equal to all or a portion of the amount of their state income tax liability. 

The combination of professional and college football, along with a competitive seven-game World Series, helped make October a solid month for sports wagering in Mississippi. 

The total taxable revenue for the month was a little more than $12.2 million, an 18 percent increase from October of last year for the state. Those numbers varied by regions, however. The northern and central regions had minimal gains of 5 and 4 percent, while Coastal casinos posted a change of more than 24 percent. Also of note, more than half of the revenue was from baseball. 

Because of the timing of the most popular sporting events to place bets on, revenue from sports wagering has– and will – continue to fluctuate greatly by month.

And competition will only continue to increase for money from sports betting since the Supreme Court legalized the practice last year. For now, the Coast has been saved from Louisiana’s inability to pass legislation legalizing sports betting in the Pelican State. They will surely try again. 

Other states have moved faster. 

In Arkansas, sports betting became legal in July. A year ago, voters approved a ballot initiative legalizing sports betting and the Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, is the first to welcome betters. While the timeline is still to be determined, a casino closer to home, Southland Gaming & Racing in West Memphis, is expected to begin collecting wagers soon. Competition has swallowed a lot of the revenue Mississippi once experienced, and this would likely add further pains to Tunica area sports betting operations.

Tennessee could also add to those pains, but they have some work to do. The state passed an online-only sports betting bill earlier this year, but it has many issues – requiring sportsbooks to buy official league data to settle in-play wagers, a very expensive entry point and high taxes, and a ban on prop bets in NCAA games. Much work remains before the Volunteer State is taking bids. 

Legislation was introduced in Alabama this year, but it did not move and most consider sports betting a long-shot with our neighbors to the east.

While competition and the general ebb and flow of sporting events people like to place wagers on will always remain, Mississippi’s requirement that you must be in a casino to place bets greatly limits the pool of those who will legally bet. 

As we see, it can be a boon during the World Series or March Madness, but generally speaking a person in Jackson isn’t going to drive to Vicksburg to place a bet on a random baseball game in July. They will continue to bet illegally because bookies are not going to disappear overnight. 

While Mississippi made a positive first step in being ahead of the curve when it comes to sports betting, all of the data shows that states need to create an avenue for individuals to bet online to generate the most revenue. 

Last week, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving with family, turkey, football, and – more likely than not – shopping. Early reports show that Americans began the official 2019 holiday season with record retail purchases.

And while a great deal of the focus will be the continued shift away from brick-and-mortar to digital, we can also use the time to acknowledge the best news: it is easier than ever to purchase common household goods. 

Did you purchase a television on Black Friday? Today, TVs are universal, and if you don’t have one it is likely because you made the conscious decision not to have a TV in your house, not because you can’t afford it. 

That’s because TVs, like most commonly owned goods, have declined dramatically in price. A 23” color TV in 1968 cost $2,544 (in 2018 dollars). Based on the average hourly wage in the manufacturing sector, also in today’s dollars, it would take 125 hours of labor to afford that purchase. Last week, 32” smart TVs were available for $99, or less than 5 hours of labor. And this doesn’t take into account the technological advances of TVs in 2019.

When we see stories about wages being stagnant or new generations being worse off than their parents, we miss one very important item: purchasing power. Yes, government regulated items like education and healthcare have increased much faster than inflation, yet that’s not true of most consumer goods, as shown in the chart below. 

We have the ability to purchase more items, and we are likely buying items of greater than quality.

Need something else to be thankful for? The cost of your Thanksgiving dinner slightly declined from the past year, continuing a 30-year trend.

“The main course on many Thanksgiving tables, the turkey, costs slightly less than last year,” a new story from Human Progress found. “In 2019 the average nominal cost of a Thanksgiving turkey stands at $20.80 for a 16-pound bird. That’s roughly $1.30 per pound, a 4 percent decrease from last year. And that’s before adjusting for inflation!”

And if you traveled last week, you’ll also be happy to know that air travel continues to get safer.

Our well-being is improving, and it’s expanding to more and more Americans. Something we rarely hear about, or talk about. Maybe we should.

As families across the country assemble to celebrate the holidays, the nation’s largest teacher union, of which the Mississippi Association of Educators is a member, is encouraging its members to politicize the gatherings.

MAE is the state affiliate of the National Education Association, and dues from the local union support activities of the national union. Including NAE Ed Justice, which wants to see families “ring in justice this holiday season.”

How can they do that? Skip the talk about your kids, job, or the deer you killed this morning. Instead, open your meal with “conscious questions.” Such as:

And, naturally, the kids should be involved as well. Recommended questions at the kids table:

We should also bring in new symbols to our holiday gatherings. Beyond lights, candles, and other common decorations, here are how the wokest among us symbolize the holidays:

NAE is no stranger to delving into virtually every left-wing political issue, far beyond the teaching of social justice in public education. At their recent convention, NAE affirmed a new business item that reads:

“The NEA will include an assertion of our defense of a person’s right to control their own body, especially for women, youth, and sexually marginalized people. The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.”

This is a sharp change from prior years when they attempted to walk more of a middle ground on abotion, saying they support “reproduction freedom,” not abortion, while bragging about not spending money in regards to pro-abortion legal services.

As we have seen with the left, abortion has moved from “safe, legal, and rare,” to legal until the moment of birth and funded by taxpayers. And if you disagree with that you are evil, anti-woman, and essentially support violence against women. 

But the bigger question is, is it necessary for the NEA, or its affiliates, to take a position on abortion? NEA is certainly a left-wing organization, that has never been in doubt. But, what does abortion have to do with education or teachers? 

One might presume a rejected item that calls for a renewed emphasis on quality education would be more in line with the NEA. That read:

“The National Education Association will re-dedicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning in every public school in America by putting a renewed emphasis on quality education. NEA will make student learning the priority of the Association. NEA will not waiver in its commitment to student learning by adopting the following lens through which we will assess every NEA program and initiative: How does the proposed action promote the development of students as lifelong reflective learners?”

But, alas, the union rejected those ideas. 

In this episode of Unlicensed, we break down the best Christmas movies of all time while diving into the important topics of the day such as Die Hard's role in Christmas movies and why the boy in a flannel shirt always gets the girl in Hallmark movies.

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