The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of public charter school funding, preserving the schools that have served as a lifeline to hundreds of Mississippi children in just a few short years. 

“This ruling is a major victory for parents who simply want what every parent wants: the ability to choose the best possible education for their children,” said Aaron Rice, Director of the Mississippi Justice Institute. “We are happy for our clients and for every parent and student in Mississippi who will continue to have increased educational choices because of this ruling.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit in 2016 which could have shut down charter schools. The Mississippi Justice Institute intervened and represented three parents whose children attend charter schools.

The Court ruled that Mississippi’s Charter School Act of 2013 is constitutional. The Southern Poverty Law Center had argued that part of the Act’s funding mechanism was unconstitutional. That provision requires public schools to share the tax revenues collected for education with charter schools in their district, based on the number of students who attend those charter schools. The Court held that this funding mechanism was constitutional, because charter schools are public schools and are associated with the school district in which they are located.  

“The parents are pleased that the Supreme Court has confirmed the authority of the legislature to provide different options to meet the educational needs of all Mississippi children,” said Mike Wallace, a Shareholder with Wise Carter who provided pro-bono counsel for charter school parents. “Mississippians should now continue to work with the legislature to develop new and creative programs so that parents can choose those that best serve their children.”

“I’m very excited about this decision,” Tiffany Minor, the mother of a student at Smilow Prep said.” It gives my daughter and other children the opportunity to choose what type of education they would like at what school they choose to go to. So I’m very excited. This was the best decision ever. I love it.”

In just a couple years, Tiffany has seen the change this new option provided for her daughter, Jalonda. 

“When my daughter did a test during her first year at Smilow Prep as she was entering fifth grade, she was on a third grade reading level,” Tiffany said. “By the time she ended that school year and was getting ready to go to sixth grade she was on the actual six grade reading level. So she transformed three reading levels in one year from Smilow Prep. It’s helping her and she’s having fun while she’s making honor roll so I love it. It’s amazing to me.”

“Smilow Prep has helped me a lot since I’ve been in it and it actually makes me a better learner,” Jalonda said. “They give me extra help when I need it.”

Charter schools are public schools that are given freedom from some of the regulations placed on traditional public schools. They currently operate in over 40 states and the District of Columbia. If the Southern Poverty Law Center’s suit was successful at the Mississippi Supreme Court, Mississippi would be one of a small handful of states to not offer these innovate schools for children.

Ella Mae James has two children at Reimagine Prep, Laporcha and Jonathon.

“My children have been attending Reimagine Prep from when the school first opened,” Ella said. “And they have grown so much in their reading and math levels. They did it with the tutoring and the extra help they receive. And we just appreciate having this opportunity to give them that choice.”

The full ruling can be found here.

Jackson’s crime problem not only impacts the city, it impacts the entire state.

As we talked about in a previous story from our look into Jackson this week, Mississippi’s capitol city has seen a disturbing spike in violent crime. But what can we do about it?

Just send more people to jail?

Usually when people discuss issues of crime and discouraging crime, the idea of longer prison sentences is floated. But this idea goes against evidence that points to what works and what is recommended by corrections officials.  

Prison should work to reform people who want to turn their lives around and separate those who don’t want to be reformed from the rest of society. However, without incentives to participate in any programming, people who would truly want to turn their lives around leave incarceration worse than when they entered.

Incarceration used as a means to deter crime is a myth. 

Research proves that people are more influenced by whether they will be caught at all and whether they will be convicted quickly. Swift and certain sanctions deter crime better than long periods of incarceration.

Many states have proven they can reduce both crime and incarceration in the last decade. 

Here are some real solutions that would help alleviate some of Jackson’s crime issues. 

Prioritize diversion and treatment.

Currently, people with addiction issues and those convicted of serious violent offenses are treated much in the same way – they’re sent to the same jail and prosecuted criminally, then they serve time in prison and time on supervision afterwards. 

The problem with this approach for people who struggle with addiction is that drug usage is rampant in prison. The city and state are paying to incarcerate someone for using drugs, while they continue to use drugs in jail and after release. There’s a better way to address this problem by implementing treatment diversion programs that connect people with drug treatment programs.

These have been successfully implemented in jurisdictions around the country, and are proven to be more effective than the traditional approach. 

Focus supervision resources on serious offenses. Place a maximum cap on probation lengths and reduce the number of people jailed and imprisoned for minor technical violations. 

Currently, probation and parole agents are massively overloaded, having to supervise over a hundred people each. This makes it impossible for them to adequately supervise people. Some people are on probation or parole for up to five years, although research shows that most crimes are committed within the first two years. Capping probation times at three years could allow officers to provide more supervision to those who most need it.  

And focus resources of people with serious offenses by eliminating imprisonment for technical violations. 

Prioritize jail space for people who pose a danger to public safety. 

By focusing on serious offenses, the city can reduce the number of people jailed for petty misdemeanors.

As Gov. Phil Bryant discussed in his State of the State address earlier this year: Reforms might be labeled soft on crime, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Conservative states around the country have pioneered this approach, and Mississippi would do well to learn from them. 

Jackson does not have to have a crime problem just because it’s a large city. Over the previous two decades, we have seen cities revitalized and made safer. A very important step in that process is making residents, or potential residents, feel safe. 

By continuing to implement smart reforms, we can make Jackson, and every city in the state, safer.

This week, Mississippi Center for Public Policy will be looking into the underlying reasons as to why Jackson is struggling, exploring the legislative and regulatory climate which encourages migration and business stagnation both within our capital city, and across the state.

A former Jones County Junior College student is suing the school for twice infringing his First Amendment rights to free speech.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed a complaint in U.S. District Court Tuesday on behalf of J. Michael Brown, a former student at the school who is now at the University of Southern Mississippi. 

The complaint says that Brown was stopped twice by campus police for trying to inform students about the political club he was involved, Young Americans for Liberty, without prior authorization from the school’s administration. 

Brown was stopped by campus officials twice, once in February about an inflatable beach ball, known as a “free speech ball,” upon which students could write messages of their choice and the second in April for polling students about marijuana legalization. 

An administrator told YAL that they weren’t permitted on campus since they hadn’t sought permission from the college.

According to Brown, he and another student held up a sign polling students on recreational marijuana. Campus police took him and another student to their office after telling a friend who wasn’t a student to leave and escorted off campus.  

“Some people get in trouble for smoking weed, but at Jones College, I got in trouble just for trying to talk about it,” Brown said in a statement. “College is for cultivating thought and learning and encouraging civil discourse with your peers. That's not what's happening at Jones College.”

The lawsuit seeks declaratory judgement to strike the free speech restraints from the student handbook, a permanent injunction against the school to restrain their enforcement of unconstitutional policies and practices, monetary damages and attorneys’ fees.

The school’s student handbook requires at least three days’ notice to administrators before “gathering for any purpose.” The student handbook also puts even more restrictions on college-connected student organizations, which must schedule their events through the vice president of student affairs. The school administration also reserves the right, according to the handbook, to not schedule a speaker or an activity.

In May, FIRE wrote a letter to Jones Count Junior College President Jesse Smith offering to help the community college bring its policies into compliance with the First Amendment. The school didn’t respond to the letter.

Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon, FIRE’s director of litigation, said in a statement that the school had a chance to do the right thing.

“Instead, its leaders ignored their responsibility to uphold the First Amendment,” Beck-Coon said. “Now the college has to answer for its censorship in federal court.”

Cody Gibson of Gibson & Mullennix is assisting FIRE with the case as local co-counsel.

The city of Jackson’s population has declined by some 40,000 residents over the past four decades. And one of the prime reasons is the district education in the capital city. School choice could change that.  

Routinely rated as poor or failing, most recently receiving an F-rating from the state, there are few options for a quality education from the Jackson Public School district.

JPS, which is losing students at a faster rate than the city, currently spends more than $11,000 per student, about $1,000 above the statewide average.

JPS has seen a decrease from 30,000 students in 2012 to under 24,000 last year, a drop of 20 percent. Yet the city’s population only dropped about 5 percent during that same time. That is partially because families now have free alternatives. 

In the past four years, a small charter market has emerged with about 1,500 students enrolled in charter schools in Jackson. Compared to the larger JPS system, the charter market is still tiny. There is not a high school and kindergarten and first grade have just recently become options. But in the grades that have had charters for a few years – mainly fifth and sixth grade – we see 15-20 percent of public school students migrating to charters. 

These are parents who never previously had an option now having an option. 

Jackson also has a large private school sector, with a number of high-quality schools competing for students from Jackson and the surrounding counties. But these schools price out many who would love the opportunity to attend. 

Along with a charter authorizing board that welcomes more schools to the city, allowing tax dollars to flow to parents for their child’s education would help eliminate one of the reasons families leave Jackson. That same family would no longer, in their mind, have to leave because of a failing school system. The “either-or” dilemma is no longer an issue.

A great example on how this could work is in Washington, D.C. By the late 1990s, the city’s population hit a 60-year low as families headed to Virginian and Maryland in large numbers. And new potential residents never considered the city. But over the past two decades, the city’s population has grown by more than 100,000.

Yes the city is now safer and more appealing, but today parents in D.C. have more options than ever, including a charter sector that serves over half of the city’s students, magnet schools, a federally funded voucher program, and districtwide open enrollment. Less than on-in-four students attend their assigned district school. 

The potential is there. Because even if you revitalize the city and make it a place where young professionals want to live, you’ll still see an exodus when their children turn five. 

This week, Mississippi Center for Public Policy will be looking into the underlying reasons as to why Jackson is struggling, exploring the legislative and regulatory climate which encourages migration and business stagnation both within our capital city, and across the state.

Last year, in a massive, high-profile, bidding war, the corporate behemoth that is Amazon announced that it would be opening a second headquarters, and would be accepting applications for this opportunity. 

Altogether, 238 cities/states applied for the opportunity. For months, Amazon made it seem that it would be seriously considering all proposals, before ultimately settling on two massive urban centers in New York City and outside Washington D.C. in Northern Virginia. While 24 different applications came from Massachusetts, only one came from Mississippi, and records don’t seem to provide the name of the city that applied. This process reveals the lacking capacity of Mississippi to draw in major business programs.

Now this process was inherently flawed, as it encouraged states to dole out state-sponsored bribes in the form of tax incentive programs and to favor one company over others. However, it also reveals the structural challenges Mississippi faces in attempts to be competitive against other states when it comes to the modern market incentives to draw in and sustain businesses. 

We have previously written about the need to reduce crime to positively influence population growth in the Jackson area. But that’s not all. There are also legislative and regulatory policies hindering business growth in the state, and changes that could be made to prepare for the future.

As city and state leaders further consider the future, they ought to reflect on how best to build an environment which positively promotes business development and entrepreneurship on the local level. 

To meet this end, Jackson, Ridgeland, Madison, Flowood, and Pearl need to consider branding themselves not just as individual cities competing for business and citizens, but as the Greater Jackson Area along with the capital city. 

This type of community partnership has proven quite effective elsewhere across the country, especially in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, and the Research Triangle that is Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill in North Carolina. In these cases, cities have been able to combine their individual strengths such as education centers, available land, working-age populations, and more in order to make a more coherent pitch for both new businesses and new residents.

These strong regional coalitions have undoubtedly contributed to these cities becoming some of the fastest growing in the nation. One needs only to look into the history of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research Triangle to understand how a regional area can turn itself around. In the early 1950’s, the per capita income of the area was one of the lowest in the entire Southeast. Yet today, the Research Triangle cities are consistently listed as one of the best places to live in the country, and each day they attract about 80 new residents to the area.

A few key lessons emerge from the development of the Research Triangle. It was not a top down initiative driven by government. The Research Triangle was endorsed and publicly supported by leadership but was driven forward through private solutions which allowed the organization to operate with the efficiency of a non-governmental entity. The privately funded Research Triangle Institute targeted the emerging technological developments and sought to make itself a flexible institution, capable of changing with a shifting economy.

These lessons ought to be internalized by local leaders and applied to our future growth. First, government can’t dictate and direct the economy and see consistent success. We need to encourage private growth and investment, and take the government hands off the wheel. Second, only in the promotion of market freedom can we ease the regulatory burden and encourage creative entrepreneurs to steer the economy in Jackson and the greater metro area.

Recent studies reveal the unfavorable environment for starting a business in Mississippi. Business Insider ranked us the 35th best place to start a business. In a more recent report, another website ranked us the 38th best place. You can search for others that have similar results. What is clear is that we’re at least stagnating, but are potentially getting worse by comparison to other states. In these studies, while we were consistently ranked well for our cost of living, we ranked rather low in regards to our access to an educated employee base, and the actual cost of starting a business.

Another important factor in both of these studies is an evaluation of the overall entrepreneurial environment. This status depends on how many people are starting businesses and the survivability of a business. This is another factor which Mississippi and individual cities can directly impact. 

Policies that protect entrenched interests stifle economic competition and limit the ability for new business owners to break into the market. This stifling effect can be accomplished through a variety of regulatory and legislative approaches. Burdensome occupational licensing, business fees, and restrictionist policies all play a part.

Regulators often claim the need to protect citizens in establishing these rules, but really they are protecting entrenched business interests across the state. While we ought to create policy that is favorable to business, it shouldn’t favor established businesses over those attempting to break into the market. Competition is good, it incentivizes further development and elite performance. 

When a competitive business market is present, the best companies thrive, and the consumer is presented with the best options and quality of experience.

In order to help ease this burden, we need a mechanism to repeal outdated or unnecessary regulations. A few years ago we established an occupational licensing board to review new regulations, but there is still no metric in place to effectively and efficiently dismiss overly burdensome, previously established, regulations. To this end, we ought to create a non-governmental review board with the authority to roll back excessive regulations.

Currently 55 percent of our economy is controlled by the public sector. This is not sustainable for growth. The role of government in the economy is to protect property and enforce contracts, not to fuel the economy both directly and indirectly through its largesse and its allocation of contracts and resources.

In Mississippi, our leaders love to claim success in regards to our low tax rates. However, the more burdensome taxes are still present, but just better hidden, and they hit businesses especially hard. 

We tax land, buildings, inventory, and equipment at higher rates than all surrounding states. All these factors play a direct role in business decisions. As noted in Promoting Prosperity in Mississippi, the state is one of only ten that taxes business inventory. Even with an existing partial rebate, this tax punishes inventory levels and encourages states to set up shop in nearby Alabama and Tennessee, neither of whom have an inventory tax.

Furthermore, we are one of only nine states in the entire nation that tax intangible property such as stocks and bonds. This tax directly discourages any large company from basing itself in the state, because it heavily burdens companies that own their own stock (as most large publicly traded companies do).

On top of this, Mississippi maintains property taxes far above the national average. According to the authors of Promoting Prosperity in Mississippi, if the state were to set its commercial and industry taxes to the national average, then business activity could increase by up to 20%, new plant establishments could grow by up to 8%, and employment growth could increase to 2.44% per year.

Much of Jackson has been designated as an opportunity zone for the next ten years by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and federal incentives have been put in place to fuel business growth and investment. By encouraging businesses to take advantage of these incentives and lightening the present tax burden on industry, we can promote new companies to invest and existing companies to expand.

For many of the regional partnerships around the country, education is a great asset (perhaps especially true in the case of the North Carolina Research Triangle). The strength of Mississippi’s community college programssets this region apart for its ability to create a workforce that is well-balanced for the next generation of jobs. Continuous education will surely be necessary as technological advancements mandate a flexible workforce. 

The region should make this factor a staple as it pitches itself for the next generation of businesses which are guaranteed to be more digital, and more technologically inclined, along with the high caliber private universities in the area. 

As we look to the future, we need to seek to free ourselves of economic reliance on the payroll of government. The pathway to success is consistently proven to be paved by private industry. 

As we attempt to make the Jackson area, and Mississippi as a whole, more attractive to businesses, we must recognize our current barriers to market growth, especially those burdens which were imposed by government with the aim of protecting existing industry rather than seeking to foster the type of economic competition which would ultimately expand it. And we must emphasize our assets, such as our community college programs and low cost of living, and then allow the market to do the rest.

This week, Mississippi Center for Public Policy will be looking into the underlying reasons as to why Jackson is struggling, exploring the legislative and regulatory climate which encourages migration and business stagnation both within our capital city, and across the state.

Passenger trains tie us to our nation’s history and they remind us of far-away destinations and adventures. But we should not allow our nostalgia to cloud our rational thoughts about good public policy. Especially when it involves taxpayer dollars. 

The plan to restart passenger service from Mobile to New Orleans, with stops along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, is a great example of letting pleasant sounding promises overpower railroad cars full of empirical evidence and common sense. Mississippi leaders have committed $15 million of taxpayer money to the initial infrastructure costs to restart the Gulf Coast line. The project has also received $33 million in federal grants.

Even though this line of passenger travel, which runs on railroad lines owned by CSX, was discontinued in 2005 due to declining interest, we’re being told this attempt will be different. Has the mindset of travelers along the Coast changed that much?

Most of the political leaders are on board, claiming it will create jobs, grow the economy, and increase our quality of life.But are new people actually coming to the Coast because of a train, or is it just visitors who previously traveled by car? And can we objectively evaluate how this impacts our quality of life? 

To be fair, there was an economic impact study produced by the Trent Lott National Center for Excellence in Economic Development and Entrepreneurship at the University of Southern Mississippithat claimed a potential creation of somewhere between 1,600 and 16,000 jobs annually. That study also estimated the potential economic impact of over $1 billion. Having been deeply involved in feasibility studies and economic impact modeling in support of municipal funding in my earlier life, I wouldn’t bet the mortgage payment on the likelihood of actual results ever crossing paths with these estimates. Call me cynical.

There are some less promising estimates than those from the Trent Lott Center. Amtrak’s own study admits that this new line would attract just 26 riders per train and require a $6 million annual subsidy to stay afloat. 

The Amtrak passenger rail boondoggle isn’t just on the Coast. To date, Amtrak has yet to produce a profit while operating a monopoly with almost zero competition from private market participants. For 48 consecutive years, going back to passage of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation in 1970, Amtrak has lost money. It produces those losses even though it receives nearly $1 billion in federal and state subsidies every year. 

Amtrak has tried to change course. They have begun to reduce their operating losses thanks to a focus on shorter routes in the highly congested areas of the Northeast that largely take people from their homes to work. Can you think of an area less like the Northeast than the Gulf Coast communities in Mississippi?

Another factor that complicates the establishment of the service is the need for CSX, which owns the 136 miles of track that Amtrak wants to use, to agree to the terms of a use agreement. CSX moves freight on the line for 250 customers, operating approximately 20 trains each day. There are potential conflicts of service delivery to work through and both sides have agreed to a third party analysis and report. 

The state of Louisiana has already agreed to $10 million in initial funding. Through the Mississippi Department of Transportation, Mississippians will be funding $15 million to the project. Alabama has thus far declined to commit to funding its portion of $3 million. The Gulf Coast line is projected to cost a total of $65.9 million. Though we know long-term operational and maintenance costs are likely to be much greater.

Taxpayers in Mississippi should not have to fund pet projects that residents are not willing to pay for. If the passenger train demand is so strong in the region, we should invite private operators to put forward their plans. If profits can be generated from such a service, you can rest assured the private providers will do it much better than the public ones. 

For example, Fortress Investment Group owns and operates a passenger train service in Florida under the Virgin Trains USA brand. It takes passengers from Palm Beach to Miami. They just announced adding Orlando service. Surely they can get folks from Mobile to New Orleans, too. 

When Fortress completes the expansion to Orlando in 2022, they will be the only high speed rail service operated privately in the U.S. We should show Virgin Trains USA our hospitality and invite them to Mississippi. 

This column appeared in the Meridian Star on September 5, 2019.

In this episode of Unlicensed, we talk about the $15 million the state is appropriating for passenger rail on the Coast and why this is a bad deal for the taxpayers of Mississippi.

D’Iberville’s city attorney was involved in several land transfers related to a shopping center development heavily funded by a now-defunct state program.

Fred “Dub” Hornsby III is D’Iberville’s city attorney and prosecutor. He and his law firm were involved in several swaps between the city of D’Iberville and Coast developer Bob Mandal’s company that owns several car dealerships in the city, including two that are on the site of the new development. 

His firm also helped with several transfers that didn’t involve city government, including a swap with some city-owned land for the site of one of Mandal’s former dealerships in 2016. The city bought and later sold back to Mandal land bordering the interstate that was supposed to be the site of a now-defunct aquarium, Ocean Expo.

Attorneys are often tasked with property transfers in Mississippi as deeds exchange from a buyer to a seller. Hornsby’s firm wasn’t the only law firm taking part, as several others participated in the land transfers involved with the Galleria development.

The Gulf Coast Galleria is being developed by Mandal and Rise Partners of Chattanooga — which took over for original partner CBL Properties — at an 80-acre site located at the junction of Interstates 10 and 110, which connects the primary highway with downtown Biloxi and the beaches at its terminus at U.S. 90. 

According to WXXV TV, the development’s first phase is supposed to be completed by summer 2020. 

Two of Mandal’s limited liability companies — Ramco Developments and TAC of D’Iberville —joined Popps Ferry Road LLC to buy up lots that bordered the interstate along Popps Ferry Road and D’Iberville Boulevard. 

Popps Ferry Road was a Chattanooga-based LLC that was set up by Rise Partners. Both Ramco and TAC are listed on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website as being Mandal-owned firms.

Some of the land transfers on the Galleria property that Hornsby’s firm participated included: 

• July 25, 2011– A transfer of two parcels from Ramco Developments to the city of D’Iberville that later became part of the Galleria property.
• February 20, 2012 – Transfer of a parcel from George Wilkins to Ramco Developments.
• February 19, 2013– A transfer of a parcel from Victor Igich to TAC of D’Iberville.
• April 30, 2013 – A transfer of a parcel between Popps Ferry Road LLC. and TAC of D’Iberville.
• November 1, 2013– A transfer from five owners of a parcel to TAC of D’Iberville.

The Mississippi cultural retail attraction program died in the Mississippi legislature in 2016, when the authorizing law expired without passage of an extension, but the Galleria is still approved to receive $96 million from the program.

The Galleria project was authorized on December 19, 2013 by the MDA, with a minimum required investment of $50 million and an estimate of a $320 million capital investment by the developers.

The Galleria received its third extension from the Mississippi Development Authority in July 2018 that moves the deadline for the start of construction to 2022. That’s nine years after the project was authorized in 2013 and six years after the program ended. 

D’Iberville provided $2 million in a tax-increment financing bond to build two car dealerships on the site, also owned by Mandal. The city also provided $16 million to build five- and six-lane roads that feed into the Galleria site.

MDA and the Federal Highway Administration spent $50 million to rebuild the interchange at interstate 10 and Galleria Boulevard.

Under the cultural retail attraction program, Mississippi returns 80 percent of the sales tax revenue to the developer until the total reaches 30 percent of construction costs. Each retail project in the program must offer either $1 million worth of state-related art, historic markers or audio-visual equipment, or host space for the MDA for 10 years for tourism promotion purposes.

In 2018, Jackson reported one of the highest murder rates in its history, part of a disturbing recent trend in violent crime. 

WLBT reported a homicide rate standing at 50.3 per 100,000 people. The Clarion Ledger reported just a few weeks ago that Jackson is on a record pace for murders, with estimates as high as 100 murders possible for this year. Shockingly, Jackson ranked third in the nation for its murder rate, standing only behind St. Louis and Birmingham in 2018. This sets Jackson violence ahead of New Orleans, Memphis, and Detroit, and is double the rate in Chicago.

While Jackson leaders had previously promised a crime center that would dramatically help the situation, nothing has come to fruition yet. 

The facts are clear, and the continued violence has hollowed out the town, driven down the population, and thus further discouraged younger generations from remaining in Mississippi, due to the lacking state of what should be a prosperous urban center.

Mississippi Today reported last year that the state is losing millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) at the fastest rate in the country, and it is millennials who are driving much of the population decline for the state. Many of these individuals attend public schools within the state through college, and then leave. This mass departure represents the loss of a serious investment from the public. Every individual who leaves, takes with them their years of college and high school education, largely funded by state taxpayers. 

While the suburbs around Jackson are thriving, a fact emphasized by the wealth transfer away from Hinds County, the city itself is rotting at its core. Jackson’s population has been on a consistent decline since 1980. 

City of Jackson population, 1970-2017

Residents are being driven away, thus causing an erosion of the tax base. This decline in revenue has impacted government operations, thus driving more people toward the better managed suburbs or out of the state entirely, and creating a vicious internal cycle. 

If Mississippi aims to seriously contend with the existing brain drain, then it must explore the root of what is driving so many young people to leave the state. 

According to a recent Nielsen study, millennials are drawn to cities at greater rates than previous generations. Older Americans once sought suburban withdrawal, but Nielsen reveals that millennials are tending to seek life with more subways than driveways. Compared to surrounding states, Mississippi has less to offer in regards to urban life, a point that is heightened by Jackson’s continued decline.

To begin drawing in residents again (especially millennials), the state must prioritize urban renewal for the city that was once considered a “gem of the south,” and it ought to start by making its residents feel secure again. A fully funded crime center equipped with expanded technological capacities to monitor and respond to crime around the city (as was promised) would be a potential major step forward. 

Christopher H. Wheeler, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve, has extensively studied and reported on the role that neighborhood characteristics play when businesses make a location decision. He found that security and low crime rates are vital to incentivizing business. The boarded up windows of former stores in the downtown area are a resting testament to our inability to attract new business, and without new business and new opportunities there are no new customers or new employees. 

Rather than attempting to financially incentivize out-of-state organizations to set up shop with tax payer funded bribes, we ought to consider bettering our natural incentives first. This can only be done by creating an environment in which it is safe to live and work. Reducing the violent crime rate has the potential to change Jackson’s trajectory. 

With a rejuvenated and safer urban center, we can attract new businesses to the state (without costly financial guarantees) and hopefully encourage people to choose Jackson again. For Mississippi to once again grow its population and revitalize its urban center in Jackson, people need to feel safe to operate a business and live their lives without the overhanging storm cloud that is an immense violent crime rate.

This week, Mississippi Center for Public Policy will be looking into the underlying reasons as to why Jackson is struggling, exploring the legislative and regulatory climate which encourages migration and business stagnation both within our capital city, and across the state.