In December, Andrea Falcetto attended Mississippi Host Club conference as an Airbnb host. There, she learned that between 2017 and 2018, Mississippi Airbnb hosts earned a combined income of $7.2 million dollars while $1 million dollars was earned in taxes which then went to state and local government.

But more than that, 1,800 guests were welcomed to the state of Mississippi by local Airbnb hosts alone.

Andrea experience as an Airbnb host started five years ago. In those five years, she has hosted over 500 people herself from various walks of life, including interns, doctors from Canada, people doing tours of the South, and some visiting from Chicago on spring break. 

Andrea’s own first stay at Airbnb was back in 2013 in Memphis when she was visiting from Kentucky. After numerous personal experiences like this, she realized how easy it would be to host her own Airbnb space. 

In her move to Louisiana from Kentucky, Andrea had Airbnb in mind and settled on a house with extra bedrooms. She found one and rented out through Airbnb for the two years she lived there. When she moved to Jackson in 2017, she did the same thing and found a three-bedroom house, two of which she currently rents out.

Now, thanks to the constant bookings, she rarely gets a single night in her own home to herself.  

But Andrea does not mind sharing her home. She sees it as an investment, putting the income made from renting back into the historic house in Fondren she lives in. Ultimately, the fact she is providing a spot to stay for someone who needs a place to stay, and in turn, she then has the ability to work on some projects for her home. provides a win for everyone involved.

Andrea believes Airbnb is important to Jackson but especially the Fondren area. Right now, though there are hotels being constructed now, there are currently no hotels in Fondren and those who come visit want to experience that local city feel.

The only way for them to do that right now is to stay in an Airbnb unit. Even after those hotels are built however, Airbnb will still be a more economical option for many.

As long as it has that appeal, Airbnb will continue to provide an additional form of income for local hosts in Jackson and bring to the area millions of dollars in tax revenue a year. 

One of the arguments against charter schools in the case before state Supreme Court is that they take away local property tax revenue from the Jackson Public School District.

The amount provided to the charter public schools in Jackson is minuscule when compared to both the amount of local property tax revenue (slightly more than 1 percent) and the annual expenditures by JPS (less than 0.5 percent).

Since 2015, the three charters located in Jackson have received $4.5 million from the district’s property tax revenue, or about 1.2 percent of the $373,917,333 in property tax revenue the district has received during the same span.

In 2018, JPS had expenses of $277,820,379, $298,256,286 in 2017, $282,231,492 in 2016 and $268,687,636 in 2015. 

That adds up to $1,126,995,793 in expenses from 2018 to 2015. The amount directed to charter schools represents only 0.4 percent of that spending. 

The arguments Tuesday before the state Supreme Court arose because of a 2016 lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that questioned the validity of the state’s 2013 charter school law and whether local property tax revenues can be used to fund public charter schools.

A February 2018 ruling in Hinds County Chancery Court was a victory for charter school supporters, but the SPLC immediately appealed to the state’s highest court.

The reason for the location of charters in Jackson is because the district is a failing one according to the Mississippi Department of Education’s annual accountability scores. The district has received an F grade for the past three years.

Since 2011 when the MDE switched to a letter grade system for its accountability scores, JPS has scored no higher than a D. 

The accountability grades are partially based on the performance of students and the annual progress made on the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program tests for English language arts and mathematics, which are administered annually to students in the third through eighth grades and in high school.

Also figured into the accountability grades are the four-year graduation rate, student performance on biology, U.S. history and ACT tests, and student participation and performance in advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement.

A finalized rule unveiled last week by the Trump Administration could help make coverage both more portable and affordable and increase choices for consumers.

The new rule deals with Health Reimbursement Arrangements or HRAs, which are employer-funded accounts that workers use to pay for health insurance premiums or medical expenses.

This rule will allow employers to offer HRAs to their employees in lieu of a company sponsored plan. These plans would allow an employee to take their coverage with them rather than the plan being owned by their employer and leftover funds would roll over from year to year.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the expansion of HRAs would benefit approximately 800,000 employers and 11 million employees and family members, including an estimated 800,000 who were previously uninsured.

It would also free small businesses from the complexity of having to manage a company-provided plan for its employees.

“Too many Americans today have little say in how their healthcare is financed,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar in a statement. “President Trump has promised Americans that he will put them in control of their healthcare, and this expansion of health reimbursement arrangements will help deliver on that promise by providing Americans with more options that better meet their needs. 

“This rule and other administration efforts are projected to provide almost 2 million more Americans with health insurance.”

White House economist Brian Blase told reporters on a conference call that the vast majority of expansion under the new rule will be on plans that are not part of the Affordable Care Act’s plan exchanges. He also said that the new rule will require employers to either offer a sponsored plan or migrate to the HRA model.

Under the new rule which takes effect on January 2020, companies can replace their sponsored plans with the HRAs to allow their employees to purchase in the individual market. Employee and employer contributions to HRAs are without tax penalties when it comes to both income and payroll taxes, like employer-sponsored health plans. 

According to the HHS, 80 percent of employers that provide coverage only offer one plan.

In 2017, President Trump issued an executive order that says the administration will prioritize three areas for improvement: Association Health Plans, short-term, limited duration insurance and HRAs. 

Short-term insurance plans are ones that aren’t compliant with the massive tome of rules and regulations that made Affordable Care Act plans unaffordable to many consumers and the Trump administration’s rule allowed more customers to 

The other rule allowed small businesses to join Association Health plans and receive savings through economies of scale once only limited to large companies.

Continued discussion over a possible gasoline tax increase is seemingly ignoring the passage of a $300 million infrastructure package in the special session last summer.

The Mississippi-raised CEO of the United Parcel Service, David Abney, said at the Delta Council’s annual meeting last week that he supports both a state and federal gas tax increase.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Waller Jr. said he is also supportive of a gas tax hike, coupled with a possible tax swap that could include a reduction in the state’s income tax. House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) proposed a similar plan last year.

The Mississippi Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2018 will send 35 percent of the state's use tax revenues by next year to cities and counties to help with infrastructure. The bill will additionally authorize $300 million in borrowing, with $250 million for the Mississippi Department of Transportation and $50 million for local infrastructure not administered by MDOT.

The other part of the package was the creation of a lottery, the first $80 million in tax revenue annually going to the state highway fund until 2028 and the rest put into the Education Enhancement Fund. Just the highway fund portion alone could add up to $720 million. In 2018, the Arkansas lottery generated $91.8 million in revenue for college scholarships.

After 2028, the first $80 million of lottery tax revenue will go to the general fund, with any additional funds going to the EEF.

The infrastructure bill has increased registration fees for owners of hybrid and electric vehicles and is redirecting gaming tax revenue from sports wagering to roads and bridges. Hybrid owners will pay an additional $75 when they register their vehicles annually, while owners of electrics will pay $150. 

Right now, Mississippi drivers pay 37.19 cents in state and federal taxes on every gallon of gasoline, about 11 cents a gallon less than the national average. The state’s gas tax was last increased in 1987. 

The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993. For every one cent increase, the state’s gasoline tax revenue ($423,642,449 in fiscal 2018) would increase by about $23 million.

The need for more spending beyond the infrastructure bill borne by taxpayers is questionable. In last year’s annual Reason Foundation Highway Report, Mississippi was rated 11th best overall. The condition of the state’s rural interstate pavement was ranked 37th but the state only ranked 19th in deficient bridges.

Taxpayers will spend $1,105,236,550 on the Mississippi Department of Transportation, with $559 million coming from federal funds and the rest from the state’s petroleum tax. 

The Office of State Aid Roads will have an appropriation of $225,410,848 from special and federal funds, which will help maintain 25,857.04 miles of county roads that are considered “feeder” routes between the state highways. This money also goes to maintaining 5,368 bridges on these routes.

One big component in increased infrastructure spending under the infrastructure package is the use tax, which the state can collect from online vendors. This was a result of the 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. that ended the requirement that a state couldn’t collect sales taxes on businesses without a physical presence in a state. The first year after the decision, state use tax revenues increased by 8.37 percent.

In fiscal year 2018, which ended June 30, the state collected $338,166,512 in use tax, which is a 7 percent tax assessed on all out of state purchases. Thirty-five percent of that total would add up to $118,358,279. 

So far in this fiscal year, the state has collected $287,901,358 with one more month left in the fiscal year. That’s more than 19.04 percent more than the same time last year. Thirty-five percent of that is $100,765,475.

Highways weren’t the only focus of the infrastructure plan. 

It will appropriate $3 million to be divided equally among each municipality. Of the remainder, half would be allocated on a basis of the municipality's percentage of the state population and the other half would be divided up using a proportion based on the amount of sales tax revenue distributed to a municipality during the preceding fiscal year.

The counties would receive money as well under the plan. One third of the county monies would be evenly shared with each of the state's 82 counties. 

The next third would be allocated to counties based on each county's proportion of the state's rural road miles. 

The last third would be allocated to counties based on that county's percentage of the state's rural residents. 

Technology, creative disruption, and capitalism continue to work together to make our lives better and easier. Though there is often a desire by government to limit the full potential of new technology. 

Having a personal shopper or getting fine dining delivered straight to your doorstep aren’t just luxuries for the ultra-rich these days. Now they’re available in a single click as mobile delivery apps continue to expand in their creativity and their delivery. 

While these services may feel common in today’s society, they would have seemed otherworldly just 10 years ago. Instead of spending hours grocery shopping, you can have your groceries delivered to your front door, fine dining with the convenience of take out, and cheap rides on demand around the clock - leaving those who commute to work a less expensive alternative and those who drink and drive no excuse. 

If you felt so inclined to take advantage of these conveniences, all you would have to do is place an order with any one of the dozens of delivery services available on the App Store,. Yet in Mississippi there may be something missing from your order – an adult beverage of your choosing.  

That is because Mississippi has a prohibition on the delivery of alcohol with your meal. You can order that adult beverage if you sit down at the restaurant and eat. But when you order that same meal from the same restaurant via an app, that same drink cannot be included. 

Mississippi is part of an ever-shrinking pool of states with such a policy. Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill  legalizing home delivery of alcohol with your meal. And in doing away with outdated regulations, Texas sets a good example for Mississippi to follow.  

Home delivery is about more than just drinking, it’s about the completion of an experience created by the free market. Customers benefit from being able to enjoy a drink with dinner or by saving another trip to the grocery store. Employees and employers benefit by an expanded consumer base, thus creating higher wages as well as new jobs. And the state benefits by introducing new revenue without the increase of taxes. 

While they say everything’s always bigger in Texas, these benefits would make a pretty big impact right here in Mississippi, for the state and for the individual. 

The technology is available. Convenience could be just a click away. If the government would let consumers choose. 

Washington Post: Civil asset forfeiture doesn't discourage drug use or help police solve crimes

When you tell people who know little of our criminal justice system about civil asset forfeiture, they often don’t believe you. And it isn’t difficult to see why. It’s a practice so contrary to a basic sense of justice and fairness that you want to believe someone is pulling your leg, or at least exaggerating.

No exaggeration is necessary. Civil asset forfeiture is based on the premise that a piece of property can be guilty of a crime. Under the theory, if the police suspect that cash, a car, a house or even a business was obtained through proceeds of a crime (usually a drug crime), or was in any way connected to the commission of a crime, they can seize said property. The burden then falls on the property’s owner to prove that they either acquired it legally, weren’t using it in the commission of a crime, or that someone else used it illegally without the owner’s knowledge (though not all states offer the “innocent owner” defense).

Read more

ATR: MCPP joins conservative groups in opposing carbon tax

Today more than 75 conservative groups and leaders sent a letter to congress, united in opposition to any carbon tax.

Read more

Northside Sun: Rice receives 2019 Buckley award for conservative work

Mississippi Justice Institute Director Aaron Rice has been named a recipient of the 2019 Buckley Award, given annually by America’s Future Foundation. Aaron received the award for recognition of his work in helping to defeat the renewal of administrative forfeiture in the legislature this year. 

“There is perhaps no honor greater for a young conservative than to receive an award in the name of William F. Buckley,” said Jon Pritchett, President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Read more

Monroe Journal: Our fair state takes baby steps toward change

The Fresh Start Act aims to make it easier for a person who was convicted of a crime to get a professional license. According to Brett Kittredge with the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the bill will require licensing boards to have “clear and convincing standard of proof” in determining whether a prior criminal conviction is cause to prevent someone from receiving a license.

Now, you may be thinking people who have committed crimes or been addicted to drugs should just bear the weight of past mistakes indefinitely, or that these people should not take jobs away from those who have never convicted of a crime, but I think we all know someone who wears the scars of addiction or poor choices.

Read more

SuperTalk: MJI's Aaron Rice visits The Gallo Show

Mississippi Justice Institute Director Aaron Rice visited the Gallo Show to talk about a new rule that will expand emergency telemedicine in the state.

Listen here

WLBT: Proposed regulation change could expand telemedicine in Mississippi

Telemedicine is connecting doctors and patients from afar all over the state. But regulations have been limiting the possibilities of using telemedicine in more emergency rooms. There’s only one way you’ll see telemedicine in a Mississippi ER - if UMMC is the provider. But that could soon change. Mississippi-based T1 Telehealth has been providing telemedicine in clinics and hospital but decided it wanted to offer its services in ERs.

“We wanted to do it in a way that we thought was a little bit less expensive, a little bit faster," explained T1 Teleheath CEO Todd Barrett. "So, we put together technology to allow us to be able to do that. We were blocked by this regulatory burden. We had a difficult time navigating this labyrinth of regulations.” They brought on the Mississippi Justice Institute to help navigate it. It’s a Board of Medical Licensure regulation that has prevented an expansion in this area of telehealth.

Read more

The Delta Health Alliance is a non-profit organization that receives most of its revenues from government grants and manages 52 education and healthcare programs in the impoverished Delta region in Mississippi.

The organization has four homes on its property for the use of its employees that are nearly three times as valuable apiece as the median home in the area. The DHA also receives an unbeatable deal on a lease for its headquarters.

The organization’s headquarters is located on land in Stoneville leased from the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. The organization has a sweetheart deal on its lease, paying Mississippi State University a symbolic $1 per year in a deal that expires in 2034. 

This also means the organization pays no property tax on five structures valued at $2.83 million. 

According to the organization’s most recent audit, the four executive in residence houses are valued at $843,378, or about $210,844 apiece. The office building is valued at $1,993,612. 

The median home value in Washington County, Mississippi is more than $76,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. 

From 2009 to 2011, the DHA tried to bill the Health Resources and Services Administration for more than $11,000 in maintenance and utility costs for the homes (it referred to them as cabins in paperwork filed with the government) under its Delta Health Initiative Grant. 

Its justification was that DHA employees used the cabins as temporary residence while on travel and calculated the rate based on the federal per diem for a hotel in the area, $70 per night.

In a 2015 decision, the U.S. Health and Human Services Appeal board upheld the original determination by the HRSA to disallow the spending. They said the DHA didn’t show that the per diem costs were solely for employees working solely on grant-funded work.

In fairness, there could be a need for on-campus accommodations since there are only two small hotels located in nearby Leland.  Greenville, which has several large chain hotels, is about 12 miles away from DHA’s Stoneville headquarters.

The DHA administers two Promise Neighborhoods (an Obama era U.S. Department of Education program), a medical clinic, headstart programs, anti-obesity, and anti-smoking programs among others. 

The organization receives grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. 

Their CEO, Karen Matthews, has averaged more than $350,000 in pay, bonuses and benefits annually over the last seven years.

Everyone knows too well that gut punch when you receive a bill in the mail from a provider only to realize insurance has already been applied. Health care is expensive. We need a system that is firmly rooted in competition and market dynamics.

President Trump made lowering drug prices a campaign promise. To his credit, the president is working to address this issue. That’s why he tasked the Department of Health and Human Service Secretary Alex Azar to come up with a solution to address rising drug prices. We applaud this move by the President and support their objective of lower drug prices.

Unfortunately, Secretary Azar’s proposal to lower drug costs has an alarming feature — an “International Pricing Index” or IPI. This index would serve as a price control mechanism for Medicare Part B drugs sold in America. Part B drugs are the kind that are administered by a doctor usually as injections or infusions such as chemotherapy drugs, unlike the ones that are bought at a pharmacy and taken at home.

Alarmingly, the IPI would look at the prices of drugs in 14 foreign countries and use them as a base in the U.S. Many of these countries have socialized or government-controlled healthcare industries, and should not be looked to as an example for our own healthcare.

One of the reasons America is seen as the world leader in healthcare is the vast number of new drugs that are produced here. Because of our free market system, drug manufacturers can compete with one another to produce the best, most effective medicines in the world. Millions of patients all across the globe have benefited from a system of open competition that has led to the development of the majority of new drugs over the last several years.

However, the IPI could change all of that. Using artificial price controls could cut the legs out from under drug manufacturers and inhibit their ability to develop new, life-saving medicines. Producing a new drug is extremely expensive, sometimes costing as much as $2.6 billion for a single drug, according to Policy & Medicine. This is due to the high failure rate among experimental drugs, with 90 percent failing to gain FDA approval on average, according to BIO.

While the price of developing these drugs is high, it is necessary. Each new drug that makes its way to market has the potential to change millions of lives for the better. The IPI could be the start in taking that opportunity away from patients across the world.

Though the current proposal only applies to Medicare Part B drugs, if implemented, the IPI and other similar price control methods could quickly and easily spread to other areas of our healthcare system, and even to other industries. Socialism creeping into our economic model is dangerous. It does not work. It can sound good to certain segments of our population, but it has never worked. Wherever and whenever socialism has been tried, it has failed and humans have suffered by the millions. Competition and free markets do work and have made the United States the strongest economy in the world.

A better proposal was introduced in Congress that would lower prices for Medicare Part D drugs. The Medicare Part D Rebate Rule, as it is being referred to, would use free market solutions to lower drug prices instead of socialist price control measures. The rule would take the savings created through open negotiations between insurance plans and drug makers and pass those savings onto the sickest of seniors – not the middlemen who have historically pocketed the savings themselves.

Washington is doing the right thing by focusing on reducing drug prices and making healthcare access more affordable for patients all across the country. However, it is important that they remember to stick to using free-market solutions — like the Part D Rebate Rule — to accomplish this goal and stay away from using socialist price control mechanisms like the IPI.

This column appeared in the Clarion Ledger on June 12, 2019. 

Mississippi taxpayers could soon be on the hook to cover part of the cost of restoring unprofitable passenger rail service to the Gulf Coast that was ended after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) announced the award on Friday of a $33 million grant for infrastructure and capacity improvements from the Federal Railroad Administration.

The grant would pay for half of the cost of $65.9 million project to restore part of the eastern route of the tri-weekly Sunset Limited, which ran through the Mississippi Gulf Coast and connected Orlando, Florida with Los Angeles. 

Under the grant, service would be extended to Mobile and require further contributions from Alabama and Florida to complete the route all the way to Orlando. 

The service was terminated east of New Orleans in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina devastated the track and other infrastructure.

Mississippi’s share of the bill could add up to about $15 million, with Louisiana having already committed to spending $10 million for its part and Amtrak also adding funds. 

The legislature could appropriate funds in the upcoming session after an attempt didn’t make it out of committee in this session. Senate Bill 2542, authored by state Sen. Brice Wiggins (R-Pascagoula), would’ve appropriated $4,696,500 toward Gulf Coast rail restoration and improvements to freight rail service in the area as well.

In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey is taking a cautious approach before adding her support to appropriating nearly $5 million state funds for the route. 

She cited concerns with the Alabama State Port Authority as one reason for caution. Port Authority director Jimmy Lyons said in 2017 that passenger rail out of Mobile would be a major disruption to freight operations connected with the Alabama State Docks.

Advocates say that restoring rail service would help promote economic activity along the route. One of these groups is the Southern Rail Commission, which is seeking more extensive passenger rail in the South. 

The SRC cites a May 2018 study by the Trent Lott National Center at the University of Southern Mississippi that says that construction and renovation of the rail lines on the Coast would add $34 million to the state’s economy. It also says restoration of passenger rail on the Mississippi Gulf Coast between Mobile and New Orleans would add $6 million annually to the economy.

The problem is that even Amtrak admits that restoring service will result in a hefty bill for taxpayers, since the quasi-public corporation relies heavily on federal and state subsidies to keep running.

A new Sunset Limited train that connects Orlando with Los Angeles wouldn’t be profitable and would require annual subsidies from taxpayers along the route. According to the latest statistics from Amtrak, the Sunset Limited route lost 2.6 percent of its ridership between fiscal year 2015 and 2016.

Amtrak’s own numbers in its 2015 feasibility study indicate that restoring service from New Orleans to Orlando would result in a $5.48 million loss annually. 

Just running a roundtrip, standalone train from Mobile to New Orleans would yield a loss of $4 million. Having both a tri-weekly train from Orlando to Los Angeles and a separate round trip service between Mobile and New Orleans connection would result in an annual loss of $9.49 million.

This figure doesn’t include improvements to the rail infrastructure and stations along the route, which would cost, at minimum, $14,718,000 for just the restoration of passenger rail service and $102,954,000 for what the study says is a service level for ongoing operations.

Passenger rail hasn’t fared well in Mississippi, which has two Amtrak routes that pass through the state. 

The Crescent train connects New Orleans with New York, while the City of New Orleans links the city with Chicago. 

The most recent Amtrak numbers from 2017, show that the number of passengers boarding and detraining in Mississippi decreased from 118,200 in 2011 to 96,100 in 2018. That’s a decrease of nearly 18.7 percent.

According to the Amtrak 2015 feasibility study for restoration of rail service east of New Orleans, total trips declined from 148,387 in fiscal 1993 to 81,348 in 2005, a decrease of 45.2 percent. 

Even taking into account that the federal government’s fiscal year ends on September 30, the numbers still pale when the final full year of service (2004) is considered, down 35 percent from 1993.

The study blamed delays with the train as one of the key factors in the lowered ridership. These delays, according to the study, were due to interference with freight operations from CSX — which owns the track between New Orleans and Mobile — and equipment malfunctions with Amtrak locomotives and passenger cars. 

The Gulf Coast Working Group’s report to the U.S. Congress on restoring Gulf Coast rail service also mentions that limited space with rail yards and bridge crossings would “present a challenge to operating passenger trains on schedule.”