On Tuesday, the Jackson City Council tabled for future discussion a possible lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Transportation over which entity has responsibility for maintenance of Medgar Evers Boulevard.

Jackson city Councilman Kenny Stokes said at the city council meeting that the city’s legal department could find no record of the city council approving the 1987 deal for MDOT to delegate maintenance of the road to the city. 

Stokes, who represents Ward 3, said if the item wasn’t placed on the city council’s agenda in 1987 and approved, the transfer wasn’t legally valid.

According to maps, U.S. 49’s route merges with Interstate 20 westbound in Richland and follows Interstate 220 north before resuming its northwest route at Medgar Evers Boulevard north of the interchange. 

Medgar Evers Boulevard isn’t marked as U.S. 49 south of the I-220 interchange.

 “I’m real concerned how the 49 highway in Rankin County can get over a hundred million dollars for the stretch from Richland to Flowood and it’s not even going to the school, Piney Woods,” Stokes said. “This is the gateway, the 49 highway, Medgar Evers Boulevard, to hospitals. 

“This is a sweetheart deal in Rankin County and you have a duty not to discriminate with federal funds. We’re also going to ask the U.S. Congress to get involved.”

MDOT is spending $150 million to repair and expand U.S. Highway 49 between Richland and Florence, with a completion date set for next year. The project will expand the heavily-traveled highway to six lanes between the two Rankin County cities with new culverts, curbs and bridges.

According to MDOT traffic counts, some of the intersections on 49 between Richland and Florence average about 42,000 vehicles per day.

The possible lawsuit was also supported by City Councilman Aaron Banks, who represents Ward 6

“If that agreement wasn’t executed right, then the state should be on the hook,” Banks said.

Mayor Chokwe Lumumba said at the meeting that the city’s 1 percent infrastructure sales tax is going to fund a repaving project on Medgar Evers Boulevard.

According to Public Service Commission Chairman Brandon Presley, four out of the state’s 26 electric power associations have decided to provide internet service to their electric customers.

The four non-profit co-operatives— Tallahatchie Valley, Tombigbee, Alcorn and Prentiss — that plan to provide high-speed fiber internet to the home are all located in northeast Mississippi in Presley’s district and made their announcements within the space of a week. 

The four co-ops that will provide internet service have about 99,000 combined customers, which represents about 5.5 percent of the 1.8 million mainly rural customers in the state who receive their electricity from one of the EPAs.

Tallahatchie was the first to announce the decision by its members on August 9 and plans to offer the service across its nine-county service area. The news release says it’ll take about 48 months for the system to come online.

Prentiss will pick a contractor in the next two weeks. 

“We’re going to beat this drum until every dirt road and every house and every rural community at the end of the line has the same level of service as a city,” Presley said. He compares high-speed internet service with electricity and says a similar effort like the one that electrified rural areas needs to come from the federal government to bridge what he terms a digital divide.

The Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant on January 30 and went into effect immediately. The law allows the state’s 26 EPAs, also known as cooperatives, to provide broadband to their primarily rural customer base.

The new law requires EPAs to conduct economic feasibility studies before providing broadband services, maintain the reliability of their electric service, maintain the same pole attachment fees for an EPA-owned broadband affiliate as for private entities wishing to use the EPA’s infrastructure and submit a publicly-available compliance audit annually.

Presley, a Democrat who’s running opposed for his fourth term as the PSC’s Northern District commissioner, also said Mississippi needs more federal funds to expand rural high-speed internet service and that the EPAs won’t be asking the state legislature for any funds this year.

“I don’t believe we’re getting too much federal money in Mississippi to help our people. We’re not getting enough,” Presley said. “We need it more than they need it in Maryland. We need it more than they need it in New York and California. 

“We need it because we’re on the bottom of the economic ladder and until we solve the digital divide in this state, we’re not going to help our economic problems in Mississippi and we’re not going unlock the opportunities that our people deserve to have.”

According to data from the latest FCC wireless competition report from 2017, there is a digital divide in Mississippi. Ninety-five percent of urban residents in Mississippi have access to high-speed internet service (defined as 25 megabits per second or faster). 

In rural areas, only half of residents have access to that level of internet service. In 12 of the state’s 82 counties, five percent of the population or less has access to high-speed internet.

In 27 counties, only 25 percent or less of the population has high-speed internet service available.

Presley is the incoming president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, which is the nationwide trade association for public utility regulators. He said he’ll use that platform to help spread the word about the digital divide between rural and urban areas nationally.

If you haven’t seen an eyebrow threading salon yet, you will soon. The brow-shaping trend is sweeping the nation, and devotees of the practice swear by the technique for its precision, convenience, and affordability compared to waxing and tweezing. 

The threading craze is also inadvertently accomplishing something besides perfecting American arches: it’s exposing the shameless rent-seeking that litters the occupational licensing landscape across the country.  

Dipa Bhattarai is a graduate student in Mississippi.  She was born in Nepal, and has been threading most of her life. Eyebrow threading is a very safe method of hair removal that does not reuse the same tools on different customers and does not involve the use of sharp implements, harsh chemicals, or heat. Instead, this simple technique allows threading artists to use nothing but twisted cotton thread, acting like a mini-lasso, to remove stray hair. 

Dipa saw an opportunity to pursue her version of the American Dream when word of her threading expertise led to classmates clamoring for her assistance. She opened a threading store in a local mall. Her clientele grew quickly, and within months, she hired four employees and opened a second location. 

Because threading is so safe, no government license or training is required to offer threading services, and Dipa’s business is thriving. 

Just kidding. If you believed that, you haven’t been paying attention to the licensing industrial complex as it has metastasized across all 50 states.  Fueling this growth are practitioners of various occupations counterintuitively begging the government to impose regulations on them.  In exchange, they gain a sense of legitimacy and monopoly use of a title. These occupations typically have little or no connection to public health or safety – such as flower arrangers, horse massagers, and interior decorators. 

Industry insiders run the unnecessary licensing boards spawned by these regulations, often with no legislative oversight. They have an insatiable appetite for increasing their own job security and earnings by blocking new competitors from the business. Licensing boards are the new unions, and it’s no coincidence that the increase in the former has coincided with the decline of the latter. In the 1950s, only one out of twenty people required a government permission slip to do their job.  Today, that number has skyrocketed to nearly one in three.

Like regulatory black holes, no activity escapes these boards’ jurisdiction. Plucking hairs without a license? Heaven forbid. That is the practice of esthetics, and it can cost you. No encroachment on a licensing board’s turf is too petty to go unpunished. All in the name of protecting the public, of course.  

These protectionist-licensing schemes hurt workers of modest means and young people trying to get their start in life. Which brings us back to Dipa. Business was great, until an inspector for the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology showed up, issued her a citation, and forced her to close down her business. Dipa had not realized a license was needed simply for eyebrow threading: this was America after all – the land of opportunity. 

When Dipa looked into the licensing requirements, she learned she would be required to take 600 hours of training, which would cost thousands of dollars, and the curriculum would not even teach eyebrow threading.  Instead, the classes would cover waxing, tweezing, makeup, facial massage, and a host of other irrelevant topics. Thinking there must have been a mistake, she contacted the Board. There was no mistake.  

Dipa took many of the required classes, but simply could not afford to take enough time and money away from her graduate studies to complete all of the Board’s irrelevant training.  She pled with the Board to let her thread, explaining that she did not want to perform any of the services taught in esthetician school.  The Board said its hands were tied: state law requires threaders to be licensed – an addition to the law that the Board lobbied for in 2013.  

Of all licensing boards, the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology should know better.  In 2004, the Board was sued for an almost identical situation: requiring hair braiders to take 300 hours of classes that taught nothing about braiding. After the lawsuit exposed the absurdity of the regulatory regime, then-Governor Haley Barbour signed legislation that deregulated hair braiding.  In the 14 years since that law took effect, over 1,500 braiders have registered new businesses in Mississippi, and nobody has been injured by these unlicensed entrepreneurs. 

Dipa is now represented by the Mississippi Justice Institute, and we are proud to join her this month in filing a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of Mississippi’s eyebrow threading laws. But not every budding entrepreneur in America finds their way to a law firm willing to represent them for free. It’s time for the states to adopt substantial and comprehensive occupational licensing reforms. Smothering small businesses in pointless fees and regulation works against our economy and keeps the American Dream out of reach for new generations of entrepreneurs.

This column appeared in the Washington Examiner on August 19, 2019.

Staying at a Rankin or Jackson County hotel or eating at a restaurant there can get quite expensive thanks to local tourism taxes.

The highest combined sales taxes on hotel stays and meals at restaurants were located primarily in Rankin and Jackson counties, according to examination of data from the Mississippi Department of Revenue. 

Of the eight cities statewide with total tax levies of 11 percent of more on hotel stays, five of them — Brandon, Florence, Flowood, Richland and Pearl — are in Rankin County. 

The Gulf Coast is also expensive for visitors when it comes to local taxes. All of the other cities on the 11 percent or more list, Pascagoula, Ocean Springs and Moss Point, are in Jackson County. 

Total sales tax on hotel stays in Harrison County, which includes Biloxi, Gulfport, D’Iberville and Long Beach, add up to 12 percent. 

These taxes are earmarked for the Coast Coliseum and Convention Center and the collections amounted to $4,893,319 in fiscal 2019.

There are 28 cities or counties statewide with a combined sales tax for hotels that adds up to at least 10 percent or more.

In Brandon, local and state taxes total 12 percent on hotels. The city levies a three percent tax on hotels that helped construct the city’s amphitheater. Brandon collected $1,224,801 in fiscal 2019 from its special tax.

Rankin County adds an additional two percent tax on hotels, along with the seven percent state sales tax. The county earned $973,495 from its special tax in 2019.

Like its Rankin County neighbors, Richland has a three percent tax on hotels and a two percent tax on restaurants, in addition to what the county assesses. The city earned $476,566 in 2019 from its special tax.

Pearl has two separate taxes. One is levied in the whole city (three percent on hotels and one percent on restaurants), while the other is additional tax (two percent) assessed in the western Pearl restaurant district, which is the area surrounding Trustmark Park and the Bass Pro Shop. 

Pearl collected $1,909,707 in fiscal 2019 from its special tax.

As far as restaurant taxes go, Como in Panola County has the highest combined rate at 11 percent thanks to the state’s highest tax rate, four percent.  

The city has a population of 1,310. According to DOR statistics, the city has collected $73,355 in fiscal 2019, which ended July 1, after earning $70,195 in 2018.

Twelve cities, including Vicksburg, Batesville, Hattiesburg, Jackson and Starkville, have total tax rates on restaurant sales of 10 percent.

The 73 special local levies on restaurants and hotels — the tourism taxes — began life as local and private bills in the legislature. Ten of them are assessed by counties and the rest by cities.

Local and private bills usually benefit a city or county in a legislator's district and are one of the last chores the legislature wraps up before leaving town at session's end.

All of the new taxes will require a referendum of local voters before they can go into effect and usually have an expiration date of three years from passage. Though not all. 

Revenues from these taxes are supposed to go to tourism promotion, such as for a convention and visitors’ bureau, or parks and recreation.

The same rules that govern the passage of general and appropriation bills apply to the local and privates. A three-fifths majority of both chambers are required to pass a new tax, which are pitched as temporary taxes when pitched in a referendum and are often re-authorized when they expire after three years without input from local voters.

Of the special taxes, 39 of them are listed on the DOR site without repeal dates, meaning local officials would have to act to get them off the books.

The local and private committees in each chamber of the Legislature are the only committees authorized by the Mississippi Constitution, with the rest mandated by legislative rules and state law.

The politics of division might reign in our major cities. But in places like Jackson, hospitality and communal spirit are alive and well.

With senior year of college comes the expected announcement of one’s next steps in life. At Georgetown University, where I spent my undergraduate career, as well as at many other elite schools around the country, it seems that at least a plurality of students plan on either continuing their education or going to major consulting firms. While one can choose many roads, they almost all seem to lead to the same urban areas: D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.

In January, rather than follow the well-worn paths of some of my friends and colleagues, I chose to accept an opportunity at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a state think tank in Jackson. I had friends who understood the decision, and I had friends who were perplexed by it. Over the next five months I found myself having to explain and defend why anybody would want to live in the South, declining the comforts so easily found in the nation’s largest cities.

Frankly, I understand the confusion. For at least four years, our mindset as students was centered around life in Washington, D.C., a vibrant urban area. The mainstream news outlets, our social media feeds, the movies we watched, and the politics we followed all suggested that big cities were the only places worth being, because that’s where the action was and will continue to be.

However, as I packed up the UHaul and left Georgetown behind, I felt a sense of comfort. The words “Go west, young man, go west,” so often attributed to Horace Greeley, played repeatedly in my head. I was proud of the fact that I was escaping the behemoth that is Washington, off on a new adventure.

For the past 10 years, since my dad had been transferred to the Pentagon in 2008, I had lived in or around D.C., and grown quite used to the city and its people. Entering Georgetown, I was sure that I wanted to stay in the area and get involved in politics. However, over the course of four years, as the tidal wave of progressive opinion steadily beat against me, it became clearer and clearer that the values I held dear were not fully acceptable on the campus or in the city. I was attacked and belittled, not only for my conservative politics but for my Christian faith.

It took far less than four years for me to grow tired of this toxic state of public discourse. Furthermore, for many in D.C.’s young political scene, too great attention was given to developing one’s next career steps rather than one’s self as a person. Jobs often took over life, and little time was left for other commitments. As I evaluated where I would go after college, I decided that, while I wanted a rewarding job, I also wanted to find an area where I could continue to grow in my faith, to get involved on the local level, and to develop myself as an individual. I wanted to find a community in which I could become attached and build a home. And I realized that all of this would be difficult in D.C.

On campus, the relentless culture of outrage was alive and well, as “woke” activists constantly pushed the boundaries on the next issue and demanded that all stand in lockstep with them as a testament to intersectionality. In moving South, all of that dissipated. The professional outrage is absent and community organizations are flourishing. People tend to spend more time at the local bluegrass exhibition than they do protesting.

In Jackson, people care more about the church community you’re a part of than the job title you hold or whether you have an R or a D next to your name. In Jackson, “Southern hospitality” is alive and well: people know their neighbors and sincerely care about how they’re doing. In Jackson, I have found my spirits lifted. It has become clear to me that, while the politics of division has taken center stage nationally, outside the cities, on the communal level, the best of our country is still thriving.

Undoubtedly, Mississippi is not a perfect place, far from it. But this state is built on a strong set of foundational values, which have provided a pleasant sense of relief against the growing social and political tribalism that was ever present in D.C. I have been welcomed into a community. It is here that I plan to put down roots, and I would strongly encourage others to think about doing the same.

This column appeared in the American Conservative on August 7, 2019.

In this episode of Unlicensed, we talk about the lawsuit the Mississippi Justice Institute filed against the Board of Cosmetology over licensing regulations for eyebrow threaders.

What is the state doing to prevent eyebrow threaders from working? And is this a widespread problem across industries in Mississippi?

>> Listen to our show on Apple Podcast

Mississippi has more than 2,600 hair braiders registered to practice their art with the state. And these numbers are only growing. They have more than doubled in the past six years.  

Our neighbors to the southwest, Louisiana, has only 19 people who hold the permit that is required to braid in the Pelican State. This, despite the fact, that Louisiana has a larger number of African Americans and a larger African immigrant population than Mississippi. 

Why is there such a discrepancy?

Louisiana requires hair braiders to receive an “alternative hair design” permit that includes at least 500 hours of classes. And only three schools in the entire state even offer curriculum for that license. 

But in Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour signed a law that freed the state’s African hair braiders from the irrelevant and unnecessary requirements of the Board of Cosmetology in 2005. Prior to that, hair braiders who wanted to teach others, such as Melony Armstrong, had to spend upwards of 3,200 hours in the classroom to learn cosmetology instructions that didn’t relate to hair braiding. 

After the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit against the Board on behalf of Armstrong, along with Christina Griffin and Margaret Burden, two women who wished to learn hair braiding from Melony and become licensed, the Mississippi legislature responded by freeing hair braiders and exempting them from cosmetology regulations. 

And as we have seen, an economic boom has occurred within this profession. 

Now, hair braiders only have to pay a $25 registration fee and complete a “self-test” on infection control. And despite what proponents of licensing might offer, even with the repeal of most regulations, there were zero health and safety complaints filed against braiders in Mississippi between 2006 and 2012. 

The story of Melony Armstrong has been told many times in the fight for economic liberty, both in Mississippi and throughout the country - deservingly so. 

This isn’t much different than the lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of Dipa Bhattarai, an eyebrow threader who is originally from Nepal, where threading is a way of life. Bhattarai was running two successful stores employing four people, while in college, until the state shut her down. 

Mississippi law requires eyebrow threaders to take 600 hours of classroom instruction, even though they won’t learn anything about threading in class. Rather, they will just spend thousands of dollars while not being allowed to work. 

The cases of Melony Armstrong and Dipa Bhattarai are classic examples of government overreach and licensing boards having the power to regulate – and limit – who can practice within their field. 

But as we saw with hair braiders, we can eliminate needless licensing barriers, put people back to work, and help improve the economy for everyone. 

The requirements to obtain an occupational license before working is a growing problem throughout the country. And Mississippi is certainly not immune to this current situation. 

Dipa Bhattarai knows the problems with the system all too well. She started a successful eyebrow threading business, only to have it shut down by the state. Mississippi law requires eyebrow threaders to obtain 600 hours of classroom instruction, to pay thousands of dollars, and to pass two exams.

Did I mention that nothing in those classes or on those exams covers eyebrow threading?

There once was a time when occupational licensing was reserved for those occupations that most would agree should be licensed. This includes medical professionals, lawyers, or teachers. But those days are long passed.  

Today, approximately 19 percent of Mississippians need a license to work. On average, licensing for low and middle-income occupations in Mississippi requires an individual to complete 155 days of training, to pass two exams, and to pay nearly $200 in fees. Those numbers will vary depending on the industry. For example, a shampooer must receive 1,500 clock hours of education. A fire alarm installer must pay over $1,000 in fees.

The net result is a decrease in the number of people who can work. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that occupational licensing reduces labor supply by 17 to 27 percent. In Mississippi, the Institute for Justice estimates that licensing has cost the state 13,000 jobs. All very real numbers.

What can we do?

Mississippi has made progress. In 2017, the state adopted an occupational licensing review board to provide direct supervision over occupational licensing laws moving forward. The state has also made it easier for ex-offenders to receive licenses so they can obtain employment and restricted licensing boards from pulling the license of someone who defaults on their student loans. 

All good steps, but they don’t address the underlying problems with occupational licensing. Earlier this year, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law that provides reciprocity for all licenses, even though those states don’t do the same for Arizona licenses. A couple other states have since followed suit. And this proposal has won the praise of a Democrat running for president, Andrew Yang. He called the current limits on reciprocity bad for those seeking new opportunities. A Democratic candidate for president praising a Republican governor. It can happen. 

Because this is common sense. Imagine if we needed a different driver’s license every time we crossed state lines. An individual doesn’t forget their craft because they move. Mississippi does have limited reciprocity for military families, but generally speaking the state hasn’t been open to the idea.

A bill that was introduced last session would’ve given out-of-state medical practitioners the right to practice in the state for charitable reasons. It didn’t make it out of committee. We can only speculate as to who is opposed to allowing out-of-state medical professionals to provide charity care in the poorest state in the nation. 

At a time when few states offer reciprocity, it could be a great selling feature for Mississippi. 

But despite bi-partisan support for reform, we also have entrenched opposition. Which is what licensing creates. The state of Utah recently bragged about nabbing unlicensed contractors. New Jersey was able to rid the streets of 29 unlicensed movers. 

It is true that licensing leads to higher wages for those with a license, but it does so by driving up costs for the consumer. A Heritage Foundation report found that Mississippians pay an $800 hidden tax each year because of licensing. And we do this even though there isn’t a clear increase in the quality of service. Rather, it just distorts the free market. Which is why licensing boards are so determined to protect their monopoly. 

Instead, we should trust consumers to make decisions for themselves, not the government or an industry lobbyist. We can do this through market competition, third-party ratings systems, such as an app like Yelp or even Facebook, or through private certifications that allow both the entrepreneur and the customer to decide if that certification is important.  

Because if we really want more jobs and a smaller government footprint, it starts by creating an environment that encourages work; not one that encourages the creation of hurdles and obstacles.

This column appeared in the Mississippi Business Journal on August 8, 2019.

Dipa Bhattarai was an entrepreneur just trying to pursue the American dream. Then the state shut her down.

Bhattarai grew up in Nepal, where threading is a way of life, and learned how to thread at a young age from her family. She came to Mississippi after receiving a scholarship to attend Mississippi University for Women, where she saw an opening in the market for eyebrow threading. 

”My friends loved it when I threaded their eyebrows for them, and kept telling me I should open a business,” said Bhattarai, who is now a graduate student at the University of Mississippi. “I knew it was a great opportunity to bring together my passion for threading and my dream of owning a business.”  

It was. Before long, Bhattarai had her own stores in Columbus and Starkville.

Until the state shut her down.