Men have recently started competing against women in sports, and winning. Is that fair?

If the Equality Act becomes law, it will become much more common. This bill, which is backed by nearly 300 members of Congress, will assuredly pass the House this year and be a top priority issue for any future Democratic Senate or White House. 

Under the proposed legislation, all federally funded entities would be required to interpret “sex” to include “gender identity.” If a man identities as a woman, they are to be treated as a woman. That includes, notably, high school and college sports.  

Why have men and women always competed separately when it comes to sports in the first place? And why are they still? We are in the 21st century, right? A woman can do anything a man can do and even more, right? Believe me, I am all about girlpower. 

But as equal as the sexes are, our biology will never be the same. The objective of equality of outcomes is fundamental, but the objective of the equality of outcomes is fundamentally flawed.

On a very basic level, the two genders are divided not because of their genders, but because the biological gender they are born with results in certain hormonal levels which have a lot to do with the level of athletic ability that person can achieve. One particular hormone is testosterone. You will find much more of this in men. In fact, men’s testosterone levels are around 280 to 1,100 Nano grams per deciliter while women’s normal levels are between 15 and 70 Nano grams per deciliter. This hormone increases bone density, and causes muscle mass growth and strength. It also triggers facial hair growth, so women everywhere should be thankful our bodies don’t produce more of that.  

In light of this difference, pitting genders against one another physically would not challenge either competitor to achieve their highest athletic ability.

However, there are female athletes with a much higher level of testosterone than the average female. This includes Caster Semenya, a 2016 Olympic gold medalist in middle-distance running. The International Association of Athletics Federations has attempted to regulate situations such as these by making a separate classification for athletes of Difference of Sexual Development (DSD) and will require those athletes to reduce their blood testosterone levels if they want to compete internationally. For some, situations like Semenya, justify allowing transgender women to compete with biological women. But using a statistical anomaly on the very outer bounds of the distribution mean of physiological traits to set policy for all is scientifically absurd.

What exactly happens when a male declares himself to be female? Do his hormone levels drop to match that of the average woman automatically? And as a result of that, does his athletic ability suddenly change to match that against whom he competes? Does his lung capacity decrease? How about his body fat percentage and muscle mass, does that change? No. Simply, when a man begins the process of becoming a transgender woman, he goes on hormone reducers. On the other hand, when a woman begins the transition from female to male, she is put on steroids, raising the level of testosterone. 

Over time, these hormonal changes affect the individual’s body. But it won’t change them completely. Transgender women will still have more muscle mass and higher bone density than the average cisgender female, allowing them an athletic advantage, in a way, like Semenya. These advantages are physiological. They are present as a result of nature, not as a result of societal pressures or oppressive expectations.

As a former collegiate athlete, the idea that a subpar male athlete could declare himself a female, then swoop into women’s sports, dominate, and bump girls out of the running to receive a college scholarship, or win a state title, or get to playoffs, or compete at a national level, strikes me as taking opportunities away from women, not the other way around. 

Girls and women should not be told to accept this as the new normal. In the name of progress and equal opportunity, it’s the height of irony to tell women they should just accept a scientifically un-level playing field which clearly discriminates against their gender.  

In case we have forgotten, the strides women have made in sports have been rather recent. Of those who competed in the 2014 Olympics, 40 percent were women, compared to 2.2 percent in the 1900 Olympic games. The Women’s National Basketball Association has only been in existence for 23 years. National Pro-Fastpitch was only established in 2004. The Women's Tennis Association has been around for less than 50 years. Sports have opened numerous doors for women, but those doors have not  been open long. 

Why would we let men, claiming they know what being female is like, come in and boot us out of our own opportunities? 

The attempt to allow men to compete in women’s sports, or the larger Equality Act, is simply an attempt to erase the reality of biological sex. It’s absurd.

The Mississippi Justice Institute, along with the Cato Institute, and the Pelican Institute have come to the defense of Vizaline LLC, a Mississippi tech startup that the government wants to put out of business.  

The three constitutional litigation centers filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief on May 1 that urges the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a wrongful dismissal of the Mississippi company’s lawsuit against the government.  Vizaline utilizes a publicly-available legal description of a bank’s property and then inputs those parameters into a computer program that generates a line drawing of the property description. The program then overlays those drawings onto a satellite photograph and the customer receives the Viza-plat within 48 hours.

Vizaline helps by giving a bank a bird's eye view of the property that is being used as collateral. This service helps smaller community banks because it allows them to identify and resolve any discrepancies that might require the assistance of a surveyor or an attorney. 

The company doesn’t send employees to job sites to conduct surveys or place markers and says on its website that its Viza-plat product is not a legal survey or intended to replace one.

The Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors filed a lawsuit in Madison County Chancery Court against Vizaline in September 2017, accusing the company of engaging in the “unlicensed practice of surveying” and seeking the return of all of the fees paid to the company. 

With the help of the Institute for Justice, the company filed a counter suit on First Amendment grounds in July 2018, but the counter suit was wrongfully dismissed on December 18.

The amicus brief argues that the December decision by a federal district court contradicts several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that uphold the concept that the dissemination of public information, even done for profit, is protected under the First Amendment. 

The brief also argues that the board is another “instance of an unelected state board overreaching its authority for protectionist purposes” and that courts should apply closer scrutiny to overly broad licensing laws are used to shield existing businesses from more innovative competitors.

The District Court held that the licensing restrictions only “incidentally infringed” on Vizaline’s free speech rights and therefore did not violate the First Amendment.

The key Supreme Court decision cited in the brief is NIFLA v. Becerra, which was a landmark decision in 2018 for professional speech and the First Amendment. In that case, California regulators tried to convince the court that they were only regulating professional speech regarding Christian non-profits and state-provided contraception and abortion services. 

The court, in a 5-4 decision, held that speech is speech and there is no separation between types, such as so-called “professional speech”. The decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas also held that the consequence of not protecting professional speech would be that states would reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by imposing a licensing requirement.

The Supreme Court came to the same conclusion in two earlier cases cited in the brief — Sorrell  v. IMS  Health  Inc. in 2011 and Riley v. National Federation of the Blind of N.C. Inc. in 1988 — that professional speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Vizaline resulted from the collaboration by Mississippi entrepreneurs Scott Dow and Brent Melton. Melton retired after 42 years in the banking industry. Dow came from the networking, remote sensing and geospatial modeling worlds and started his first company while still in college.

They met at the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology at the Stennis Space Center where Melton presented his idea before a group of tech entrepreneurs. The Viza-plat arrived on the market in April 2014.

The dispute started in 2015, when the Board of Licensure asked Vizaline to place a disclaimer on their website to ensure customers knew the Viza-plat wasn’t a survey. Vizaline complied with the board’s request, but the board sued them anyway.  

Download the full amicus brief here.  

Mississippi’s economic growth lagged behind most of its neighbors in 2018 even though the state’s economy had its best year since 2008.

The report by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, estimated the state’s real gross domestic product grew at a rate of one percent in 2018, a big improvement from 2014, when BEA estimated the state’s GDP shrunk by 1.2 percent. 

Since then, the numbers have been small, but steadily improving, with 0.4 percent growth in 2015, 0.3 percent in 2016 and 0.5 percent in 2017. 

Real domestic product is defined as the market value of goods and services produced by the labor and property located in a state.

That ranked the state 42nd nationally, with Alaska in last place with a GDP that shrunk by 0.3 percent. Delaware and Wyoming (0.3 percent) were next worst. Alaska was the only state whose GDP contracted in 2018.

The southeast — which includes Mississippi’s neighboring states plus Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia — averaged 2.6 percent of GDP growth. 

In the region, Mississippi was ahead of only Arkansas (0.9 percent GDP growth) and was edged slightly by Louisiana (1.1 percent).

The best growth rates regionally were Florida (3.5 percent) and Tennessee (3 percent). Washington’s economy grew at a rate of 5.7 percent, best in the nation, followed by Utah (4.3 percent), Idaho (4.1 percent) and Arizona (4 percent).

The biggest sectors contributing to Mississippi’s economic improvement were wholesale trade (0.17 percent), retail trade (0.16 percent), hunting and fishing (0.13 percent) and 0.10 percent growth for both durable and non-durable goods manufacturing.

According to the report, wholesale trade increased 9.1 percent nationally and contributed to growth in all 50 states.

In 2018, Mississippi missed the boat on information services, which the BEA says increased 8.9 percent nationally. The industry’s share of the state’s gross domestic product contracted by 0.02 percent. 

Finance and insurance was the biggest downward mover in 2018, shrinking its share of Mississippi’s GDP at a rate of 0.18 percent. Construction’s share of GDP withered at a rate of 0.04 percent.

Poor fourth quarter numbers dragged Mississippi downward, according to the BEA estimate.

In the fourth quarter of 2018, Mississippi’s GDP growth was least amongst its neighbors at 0.5 percent and ranked 47th, outpaced by Alabama (2.1 percent), Arkansas (1.5 percent), Louisiana (1.3 percent) and Tennessee (1.6 percent).

Texas, which had its GDP grow at a rate of 3.3 percent in 2018, recorded the nation’s best growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 with 6.6 percent. 

The actuary for Mississippi’s defined benefit pension fund recommends the plan make some changes to the economic assumptions it uses to plan for the future.

The report submitted by the actuary of the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) — which serves most state, county and municipal employees — says that the plan’s administrators need to decrease its assumptions for price inflation, wage inflation, and returns on the plan’s investments and increase slightly the forecast for administrative expenses.

The report says the plan needs to reduce its price inflation assumption from 3 percent to 2.75 percent to reflect the recent trends with inflation, as estimated by the chief actuary for the U.S. Social Security Administration and other sources.

With the smaller than predicted inflation, the actuaries also recommended the plan reduce its expected return on plan investments from 7.75 percent to 7.5 percent due to changes predicted by forecast prediction models. The plan’s governing board last decreased the expected rate of return in 2015 to the present figure from 8 percent.

The report also recommends the plan reduce its assumption for wage inflation from 3.25 percent to 3 percent.

The report also says the plan needs to take into account a slight increase in administrative costs from 0.23 percent of payroll to 0.25 percent.

The actuaries also changed the plan’s predictions for the mortality of its participants, with the plan assuming that retirees will enjoy longer post-retirement lifespans.

Changing those assumptions will change predictions for the plan’s finances. The actuaries say in the report that PERS’ $16.9 billion in unfunded liabilities will increase under the new assumptions to $18.415 billion. The funding ratio will also decrease from 61.8 percent to 59.9 percent.

PERS’ bottom line has improved in recent years thanks to increased investment returns, but not enough to completely bring the plan to where it should be.

As of the last comprehensive annual financial report released on December 18, the plan’s funding ratio, which is defined as the share of future obligations covered by current assets, is up to 62.5 percent. In 2001, the plan was 87.5 percent fully funded.

The plan’s investments earned $2.385 billion in investment returns in fiscal 2018, a 9.48 percent rate of return, after earning $3.4 billion or a 14.96 percent rate of return in 2017. 

The plan has earned an average rate of return of 7.84 percent in the last 25 years, just a few ticks above the expectation of 7.75 percent. In six of those years, the rate of return was double or more from expectations.

The market is often rocked by fluctuations. Eight of those years have had returns below expectation and four of those years had the plan’s investments losing ground.

Investment income isn’t enough to fill in the plan’s financial gaps, which have increased over the past decade.

The reason is the increasing number of retirees supported by a shrinking number of contributing employees. Benefit payments added up to $2.6 billion, an increase of 5.3 percent over 2017, as the number of retirees increased from 102,260 to 104,973.

The number of contributing employees dwindled from 152,382 in 2017 to 150,687. The amount of employer (taxpayer) and employee contributions added up to $1.6 billion, about the same as the year before.

With more retirees, the plan’s payments for its cost of living increase or COLA added up to $650 million, a 7.8 increase over last year’s COLA payments of $603 million. 

The PERS board voted last summer to increase the employer (taxpayer) contributions from 15.75 percent of payroll to 17.4 percent. 

More than five years after political dignitaries broke ground in the Biloxi dirt at the corner of Highway 90 and Interstate 110, minor league baseball is not working out quite as well in the Gulf Coast town as some had hoped. Or had been sold by consultants.

In 2013, the city of Biloxi conducted a feasibility study that predicted the stadium would draw 280,000 fans annually, or a little more than 4,000 per game. 

The study, a common exercise in such municipal financing plans, provided city leaders with what they needed to move forward. The city borrowed $21 million to help build the stadium. Unfortunately, for the city – and taxpayers – the hopeful projections of that $25,000 study have not panned out. 

The Shuckers have never drawn more than 180,000 fans in a year, and last year they were down to just over 160,000 in attendance. 

As a result of the lower than predicted numbers, the city is forced to reach into its general fund for about half of the $1.2 million they owe each year on the debt. Many leaders hold out hope that if more development comes to the area, it will increase attendance and revenue.

In another minor league town in Mississippi, there is plenty of development around Trustmark Park in Pearl. An outlet mall, funded in part by the state’s Cultural Retail Attractions Program, Bass Pro Shop, Sam’s Club, and a Holiday Inn all surround the park on land that was mostly swamps not so long ago.

Still, the Mississippi Braves, who play in the Southern League with the Shuckers, drew just over 150,000 last year fans last year. This is down considerably from the 190,000 they averaged in 2016 and 2017, and from 2013 through 2015 when their attendance was over 200,000 each year. 

What has this meant for Pearl? The money from this new revenue stream hasn't been enough to cover the debt on the shopping center and ballpark complex. In 2013, the city paid $967,944 to cover the shortfall, though that amount has declined in recent years, shrinking from $911,748 in 2014 to payments of $589,902 in 2015 and 2016 and $619,048 in 2017, the last year records were available.

The city also has to pay $651,852 annually until 2024 to cover a $4,433,165 agreement with the site developers. These outlays are covering underpayments from 2011, 2012 and 2013 on sales tax diversions from the Mississippi Department of Revenue that the city didn't give to the developer.

The Braves have turned the game of pitting city against city into an art form. They moved their Single-A franchise from Macon, Georgia to Rome, Georgia after securing $15 million to build a new stadium. They received $28 million from Pearl when the Double-A team moved from Greenville, South Carolina. And they were able to secure $64 million from Gwinnett county, Georgia when they moved the Triple-A franchise from Richmond, Virginia.  

But their biggest win, if you will, was in Cobb County, Georgia. The Braves were able to receive $722 million from the county to move the big league team just north of the city in 2017. 

It’s hard to blame the Braves, or any team that receives taxpayer subsidies. Their owner, Liberty Media, is doing what any good owner does; negotiating the best deal for its company and shareholders. And the attraction for mid-sized cities to have a minor league ballpark is understandable. We buy into the glitz or maybe the community pride that comes with having a professional franchise in your hometown. It gives local politicians something to highlight as everyone is convinced that minor league baseball is good for tourism and no matter what the taxpayer cost, the community is better off. Yet, we have mounds of economic data that tell us that simply isn’t true.

As the years pass and as more become aware of just how big of a raw deal sports subsides – minor league or professional – often are for cities, perhaps more local officials will choose not to give in to the economic development game. Or maybe local communities will rise up.

As for Biloxi and Pearl, the best they can do is hope the numbers turn around…and that the Braves and the Brewers don’t go looking for a new ballpark when their leases run out. 

This column appeared in the Madison County Journal on May 1, 2019.

The Mississippi Department of Mental Health has the state’s largest workforce according to analysis of appropriations bills signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant.

The department has 7,112 full-time workers and 600 temporary full-timers, the most by far among state agencies. It represents 25.8 percent of the state’s workforce of 27,610.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation is second, with 3,384 full-time employees and no temporary ones. Its employee roster represents 12.2 percent of the state’s workforce.

The Department of Corrections is third, with 2,685 full-time employees and 474 temporary full-timers. 

Fourth is the Department of Public Safety, which includes state troopers and the state Bureau of Narcotics. The agency employs 1,501 full-time, permanent workers and 90 temporary full-timers.

Fifth is the Department of Human Services, which administers federal welfare programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). This agency has 1,741 full-time workers, with an additional 932 employed in time-limited, full-time positions.

The top five agencies in terms of number of employees represent 59.45 percent of the state’s workforce.

Each appropriation bill lists the number of employees at an agency and the performance goals for the agency in the upcoming fiscal year. 

These performance measures were implemented fully in 2017 after being passed by the legislature in 1994.

Mississippi is mid-pack among its neighbors when the ratio of state employees to citizens in considered. 

According to a February report by the state auditor’s office, Mississippi has 108 citizens per every state employee, worse than only Tennessee (167 citizens per state worker) and Alabama (158 citizens per state worker).

Louisiana has 66 citizens per state worker, while Arkansas is the worst in the region with only 50 citizens for every state employee.

When it comes to shrinking the size of the state workforce, Mississippi has followed the trend of its neighbors. 

Since 2004, the state has shrunk its workforce by more than 5,200, with 4,500 of the reductions coming in the last seven years.

In 2010, Mississippi had 94 workers for every resident. Louisiana had 48 state workers for every citizen, Alabama had 144 state workers per resident and Tennessee had 143 state employees per citizen. Only Arkansas showed only a small improvement, shrinking from 51 state workers per resident in 2010 to 50 in 2017.

According to data from the state’s 2018 comprehensive annual financial report, 20 percent of the state’s workforce is employed by government at some level, a slight decrease from 2008, when 20.3 were paid by taxpayers.

The month of May is here. It is getting warmer and summer will be upon us soon. But be warned, you may also see an unregulated, unlicensed lemonade stand along the side of the road. 

For generations, a summer tradition for boys and girls has been to make lemonade, set up a stand in front of their house or near a busy road, and earn money for that special toy they have been wanting, or maybe just to save for a future purchase. For a moment in time, children turn into entrepreneurs, even though they probably couldn’t tell you what the word means.

But lemonade stand entrepreneurs have met a force that strikes fear in the hearts of even the most seasoned professionals: the government regulator.

By now you have probably heard the stories, but they bear repeating because of the sheer lunacy of feeling the need to shut down a lemonade stand, and because they highlight the overcriminalization of our society thanks to laws we have adopted to fix every supposed issue or problem.

In California, the family a five-year-old girl received a letter from their city’s Finance Department saying that she needed a business license for her lemonade stand after a neighbor complained to the city. The girl received the letter four months after the sale, after she had already purchased a new bike with her lemonade stand money. The young girl wanted the bike to ride around her new neighborhood as her family had just moved.

In Colorado, three young boys, ages two to six, had their lemonade stand shut down by Denver police for operating without a proper permit. The boys were selling lemonade in hopes of raising money for Compassion International, an international child-advocacy ministry. But local vendors at a nearby festival didn’t like the competition and called the police to complain. When word of this interaction made news, the local Chick-Fil-A stepped up as you would expect from Chick-Fil-A. They allowed the boys to sell lemonade inside their restaurant, plus they donated 10 percent of their own lemonade profits that day to Compassion International.

In New York, the state Health Department shut down a lemonade stand run by a seven-year-old after vendors from a nearby county fair complained. Once again, they were threatened by a little boy undercutting their profits. A state senator in New York has since filed legislation to legalize lemonade stands. That is correct, we need new laws to clarify that a seven-year-old can run a lemonade stand with the government’s blessing.

For those who may read this and believe the world has gone crazy, we do have a story in Missouri that ended on a good note – though there is plenty of crazy in this story. An eight-year-old boy was being heckled by neighbors inquiring about his permit. If those potential customers got sick, they wanted to know “who we should go to.” The neighbors then proceeded to yell at the boy’s mom after the boy went inside. Fortunately for the boy, the local police department heard about the incident and came by the boy’s lemonade stand to show their support, and to provide their stamp of approval.

As parents and as a society, we should be encouraging entrepreneurship. We should celebrate young boys and girls who want to make money, whether it’s for a new bike or to give to a ministry. When children have the right heart and the right ideas and are willing to take actions, we shouldn’t discourage it. The lessons are valuable. They learn that money comes from work, that you have to plan, and then produce a stand, signs, and lemonade. Introducing kids to the concepts of marketing, costs, customer service, and the profit motive is a good thing.

And why it has always been celebrated in our society for a long time.

Until today. But I suppose these interactions also provide these young children with another valuable but unfortunate lesson: beware of government and crony capitalism. Vendors who don’t like competition use the law to eliminate competition. And government, however good the intentions may have been, created the laws that actually   work against the development of entrepreneurial values by regulating lemonade stands.

As often happens when government steps in to solve a problem, there are unintended consequences few are willing to acknowledge.

Hopefully, the absurdity of these stories has raised more than a few eyebrows. Perhaps they will cause people to recognize the downside of our regulatory burden and maybe even cause legislators to review more than a few of the laws, rules, and licensing regimes that are stifling growth, innovation, and capitalism. If we want a thriving and growing economy, we’ve got to have more entrepreneurs – including those future ones who sell lemonade in their neighborhoods today.

The Mississippi Department of Education admitted a major error last week when it miscalculated the number of teachers eligible for a $1,500 raise passed this session by the legislature.

This isn’t the first time the agency has made a major error, as it has a history of fiscal issues and mismanagement.

MDE said in a news release that it calculated the number of positions based on the Mississippi Student Information System (MSIS) that had only teachers and teacher assistants whose salaries were paid by funds from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. The agency later discovered additional teachers eligible for the raise who weren’t in the MSIS system as funded by MAEP.

The difference is considerable. The $1,500 raise bill passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant will cost $58 million per year. Giving the additional teachers a $1,500 raise will cost anywhere from $12 million to $14 million in additional spending, which the legislature could fix with a deficit appropriation that wouldn’t require a special session.

Considering the pay given to the state’s superintendent of education and the number of employees at MDE, the mistake looms even larger.

Mississippi Superintendent of Education Carey Wright is the nation’s highest paid leader of a state school system and makes $307,000 per year, which is more than the salaries of Mississippi’s governor ($122,160 per year), lieutenant governor ($60,000) and secretary of state ($90,000) combined. The state superintendent’s salary was set in 2008 and Wright was hired by the state Board of Education in 2013 and.

According to the fiscal 2020 appropriation from the legislature, MDE has 550 employees statewide, with most working at the Jackson headquarters at the old Central High School building. 

The agency will cost taxpayers $181,761,535 in the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1.

MDE has been dogged by issues with fiscal management in recent years.

In August 2016, MDE fired three employees who contributed to a $19.1 million shortfall in the federal grant program designed to establish community learning centers for after-school enrichment for low-income communities.

The problem was MDE’s Office of Federal Programs issued 46 grants without accounting for the 65 already receiving the funds under the 21stCentury Community Learning Centers. 

MDE tried to reallocate funds from another federal program that sends money to help children from low-income households meet state standards. They announced in 2017 that the deficit was later reduced to $7.6 million and the funds were later restored to districts that requested.

MDE has also had problems with contracts for information technology and other services from 2014 to 2016 as spotlighted by a report by the state auditor’s office. 

The report accused the agency of circumventing state procurement laws and wasting taxpayer funds with duplicative service contracts, many of which were given to former Wright associates from her time at the Montgomery County (Maryland) school district in suburban Washington, D.C.