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School choice advocates rallied on the south steps of the state Capitol Tuesday to celebrate past legislative victories and press the legislature for further expansion.

Both Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn spoke at the rally, which was attended by school children from around the state.

“This is not about politics, but people,” Reeves said. “It’s about giving parents more options for their kids. I believe that parents know best what’s best for their kid, not some bureaucrat sitting in Jackson.

“It should not matter what a kid’s zip code is or what their mom or dad does for a living. Every kid in our state deserves a chance at success and this is about ensuring that every kid gets that opportunity.”

The Legislature has made key strides in the past seven year in furthering school choice statewide.

Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a bill in 2012 that created a scholarship for children with dyslexia. The next year, he signed a bill that authorized the creation of charter schools. In 2015, the state’s education scholarship program for children with special needs was signed into law by Bryant.

There are now five charter schools in the state.  Only one — Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School — is outside the Jackson metro area.

Reeves said he supports expanded funding for the ESA program, which will expire in 2020. This means the Legislature will need to pass a reauthorizing bill in this session or the next to keep it alive.

Due to funding restraints, the ESA program is open to less than 500 students with special needs, and parents can use an allotted $6,637 on tuition, tutors, books and other educational aids. Many sit on a waiting list.

Cleveland mother Leah Ferretti, who has two sons with dyslexia, spoke at the rally and asked attendees if they knew any program like the ESA one that has a 91 percent parent satisfaction rating in the PEER report.

“The door is closing on our babies in 2020 unless the repealer is removed,” Ferretti said. “Our program needs a new funding mechanism so it can meet the growth and the need we are desperately asking for.

“We’re calling on you legislators to allow every student in Mississippi the opportunity to succeed and not be confined to in an environment that is discriminatory or denies their civil rights.”

Also a recent report by the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) spotlighted several issues with the ESA program that could be helped with action by the Legislature.

Right now, the program’s unused funds don’t roll over from one year to the next and instead go back to the general fund. The program uses a lottery system to decide what families receive the money and PEER recommends adding prioritization for families that have been on the wait list.

Also, PEER said that the Mississippi Department of Education hasn’t administered the program as effectively as possible by prioritizing those with active individualized education program as required under law.

According to PEER, as of June 29, there were 197 students on the waiting list. Since most scholarship recipients from the year previous will continue in the program, there are only a few slots that open up for new enrollees each year. As of August, there were only 47 open slots.

In fiscal 2018, taxpayers disbursed $2,057,815 for the ESA program, with 94 percent being spent on tuition, with the rest spent on education aids such as software or textbooks.

Numerous conservative organizations sent a letter to Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, and Speaker Philip Gunn yesterday asking leadership to oppose reinstatement of administrative forfeiture in Mississippi.

Last year, the process known as administrative forfeiture was not renewed in the legislature. Administrative forfeiture allows state can take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely providing the individual with a notice.

The full letter said:

Governor Phil Bryant, Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, and Speaker Philip Gunn:

As you know, during the last legislative session the Mississippi legislature allowed legislative authority for administrative forfeiture to expire at the end of June. This was a significant and important step in addressing problems with civil asset forfeiture and continuing Mississippi’s path in being a national leader in criminal justice reform.

Conservatives rightly understand that private property rights are the bedrock of a free society, and the bar must be high for a government to seize property from its citizens and transfer ownership to the state through forfeiture litigation. Civil forfeiture is controversial because it often means innocent people losing their property to the state in processes that are complex and divorced from the prosecution of the crime that was the basis for the initial seizure.

While criminal forfeiture can and should be used to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains, cases of abuse throughout the country show that civil forfeiture—particularly when done administratively and not before a judge—has resulted in untold numbers of innocent property owners losing their vehicles, guns, cash, and other property without ever being charged with or convicted of a crime and the proceeds going to supplement law enforcement agencies’ budgets.

A growing number of states have crafted legislation to rein in the process of civil asset forfeiture and protect private property owners, and the leaders in reforms, New Mexico and Nebraska, have ended civil forfeiture and replaced it with criminal forfeiture, to address the legitimate needs of law enforcement to confiscate the fruit of crime.

Administrative forfeiture is particularly worrisome. This particular practice has come under increasing scrutiny due to its circumvention of judicial safeguards. Administrative forfeiture allowed agents of the state to take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely providing the individual with a notice. In order to appeal the ruling, an individual was required to file a petition in court and incur significant legal fees. For these reasons, administrative forfeiture was viewed as a particularly pernicious policy that placed lower-income property owners in the impossible situation of deciding whether to pay a large legal bill to get their property back.

For these reasons, we are asking you to oppose reinstatement of administrative forfeiture in Mississippi.

Sincerely,

Jon Pritchett, CEO
Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Aaron Rice, Director
Mississippi Justice Institute

Grant Callen, President
Empower Mississippi

Marc Levin
Right on Crime

Lee McGrath, Senior Legislative Counsel
Institute for Justice

Jason Pye, Vice President of Legislative Affairs
FreedomWorks

David Safavian, General Counsel
The American Conservative Union

A PDF of the letter can be found here.

The Mississippi legislature held a policy hearing on criminal justice reform Monday and there was plenty of agreement among corrections officials, prosecutors, law enforcement, judiciary, and interest groups.

These include spending savings from removing non-violent offenders from the state’s inmate population into job training and drug treatment programs, changing the state’s bond system, reducing the amount of controlled, post-incarceration supervision for non-violent offenders and removing “good faith” clauses from occupational licensing regulations.

The goal is ultimately to build on House Bill 585, which was designed to refocus prison space on violent and career criminals, strengthen community supervision and ensure certainty in sentencing.

In 2018, Gov. Phil Bryant signed another round of criminal justice reforms, HB 387, into law that created a “safety valve” option that allows judges discretion in applying mandatory minimum sentences for repeat offenders and prohibited incarceration due to the inability to pay a fine or fee among other reforms.

“In all of the corrections conferences I’ve attended, I’ve heard how Mississippi has taken steps forward,” said state Rep. Bill Kinkaide (R-Byhalia), who chairs the House Corrections Committee. “We want to embrace common sense reforms to enhance public safety while being good stewards of taxpayer funds.”

All parties agreed that more needs to be done to end the so-called “revolving door” of recidivism, where offenders keep reoffending and reentering the system because they lack the ability to find employment and build a life outside crime.

“We need to help these people (offenders) be successful or else you have to put them back in prison. That’s the bottom line,” said U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett, who was state judge from 1992 to 2004. “Everything that happens to that person in the criminal justice system affects their ability to be successful. Reentry needs to be addressed meaningfully by Mississippi.”

Starrett told the committee that the amount of time ex-cons spend on supervised release needs to be reduced in half. One reason he cited for reducing post-incarceration supervision was that most recidivism occurs in the first year for inmates after release.

According to Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall, taxpayers have saved $45 million since the enactment of the first round of reforms in 2014. According to Hall, the state’s inmate population was reduced by 11 percent after passage.

She told the joint committee that savings from those inmate population reductions need to be invested in job training and drug treatment programs and pay hikes for correctional officers, who are some of the lowest paid nationally.

Those concerns over spending on job training and drug treatment for offenders were amplified by Hal Kittrell, representing the Mississippi Prosecutors Association, Judge Prentiss Harrell of the 15thCircuit Court of Mississippi, and Sheriff Steve Rushing of Lincoln County, the president of the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association.

Helping ex-cons enter the workforce was also a concern for the experts testifying before the committee. The Mississippi Center for Public Policy’s Vice President for Policy, Jameson Taylor, recommended that the committee eliminate “good faith clauses” in occupational licensing regulations that prevent ex-felons from receiving occupational licenses. He cited two cases where ex-cons were unable to receive occupational licenses because of these clauses.

Jennifer Riley-Collins, the president of the Americans for Civil Liberties in Mississippi, told the committee that the state’s cash bail system needs to be changed since it disproportionately affects poor families.

California was the first state to eliminate its cash bail system.

She said the state’s average inmate population in county jails, where offenders await trial, averaged about 12,000 or so daily. Of those, she said 56 percent of them can’t afford bail.

“Taxpayers are footing the bill for a system that favors the wealthy and it’s not making our communities any safer,” Riley-Collins said. “You have to pay or you stay. If you can’t afford to pay, you have to stay.”

A new national survey shows that Americans continue to support school choice.

As National School Choice Week kicks off, polling from the national polling firm Beck Research on behalf of the American Federation for Children, finds that 63 percent of Americans “giving parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.”

While school choice is often considered both partisan and controversial, and certainly receives more negative than positive press, it is supported by 72 percent of Hispanic voters, 66 percent of African American voters, and 61 percent of white voters. Ideologically, 75 percent of Republicans back school choice, as do 62 percent of independents and 54 percent of Democrats.

On specific questions, polling finds:

This year, some 40,000 National School Choice Week events are planned throughout the country. The goal is to raise public awareness of all types of education options for children, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, online learning, private schools, and homeschooling.

The largest event in Mississippi will be held at the State Capitol on Tuesday, January 22.

New Census data shows income tax free states as the big winners when it comes to adding residents.

Because of our federalist system, we have 50 states competing with one another for talent, opportunity, and economic resources. Each state is largely free to dictate what they believe is the appropriate level of taxation, regulation, and size of government.

The annual Census estimates help answer the questions of what Americans prefer. With the most recently released data, we once again see low-and-no-income tax states growing.

The two hardest-hit states were New York and Illinois, which lost 48,000 and 45,000 residents, respectively. These states, home to the largest and third largest cities in the country, are both known for burdensome regulations and outsized taxes.

Unfortunately, Mississippi joined New York and Illinois in the group of nine states that lost residents last year. After a small growth last year, Mississippi lost more than 3,000 residents between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018. This marks the third time in four years that population has declined.

Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Florida, Washington, Colorado, and Texas were the eight fastest growing states, in terms of percentage growth. Each state is known for low taxes and a business-friendly climate. By “business-friendly,” we don’t mean corporate cronyism, monopoly protectionism, and regulatory capture schemes for the companies with the greatest legal and lobbying resources. Instead, we mean states with a predictable and low regulatory and tax hurdle for all shapes and sizes of businesses.

So, do people simply decide they are willing to leave a current high-earning job in a high-tax state to avoid income taxes? Not likely. The truth is taxes aren’t the single driver. Opportunity plays a major role, too. These two factors are incontrovertibly linked.

So, what can Mississippi do to become one of the beneficiaries of American migration? It can focus on fostering a climate that attracts and supports entrepreneurs, whether home-grown or imported, and small business owners. Where entrepreneurs and small businesses thrive, private capital is attracted, in the form of investors, to ideas that improve the lives of citizens.

It has always been true that the pursuit of financial gain, through the private profit and loss system, has been the greatest driver of economic prosperity. When small companies become big companies, the economic benefits to that community are infinitely greater than when government tries to orchestrate them.

Mississippi is a place with gracious people, beautiful surroundings, a temperate climate, and an alluring culture. It’s the kind of place that should thrive when the economy is strong and people are free to flee less hospitable places. Why are we not thriving? Because opportunities have been inadvertently limited by government policies. In short, our preference for federal grants and state-based (public) solutions have thwarted the way a free market economy is designed to work.

We rely on the government for too much. Whether for a grant, a subsidy, an incentive, a contract, or a job, we have far too much public sector involvement in our economy. Indeed, 55 percent of our economy is controlled by the public sector. Such behavior does not lead to sustainable economic growth. In prosperous economies, government plays the important but limited role of protecting liberty, property and enforcing contracts; it does not try to control the allocation of economic resources.

Another significant problem we have, which adversely impacts the opportunities to start and run a small business, is our regulatory environment. Although some progress has been made in the area of new regulatory review, we lack a mechanism to repeal or “sunset” outdated or unnecessary regulations. We need a non-governmental, independent review board with the authority to roll back our excessive regulatory environment, beginning with occupational licensing.

The other driver is our business-related sales and property taxes. In Mississippi, we tax land, buildings, inventory, and equipment at higher rates than all surrounding states. Higher taxes reduce business activity. We make this situation worse when we provide tax exemptions to new companies, shifting even more of the tax burden to existing companies. If we have to offer major tax credits to companies to come here, that proves previous lawmakers created an unfavorable business tax climate. Rather than targeting new companies or industries with tax relief, we should target all companies and industries with a lower business tax climate.

Mississippi can make policy adjustments that maximize our potential to participate more fully in a national economy that is prospering like never before. Every state in the South has benefited from the resulting migration of people escaping high tax states with the exception of Mississippi and Louisiana. If we reduce the cost and burden of government and focus our efforts on creating an economy driven by private entrepreneurs and small business owners, the evidence shows us that economic growth and prosperity will follow.

This column appeared in the Daily Journal on January 20, 2019.

Most of Mississippi’s public universities receive passing grades for their policies on protecting free speech, but that doesn’t mean an issue is far away.

Conservative speakers at campuses nationwide have been either disinvited or have drawn protests designed to shut the event down.

Shelby Emmett, the Director of the Center to Protect Free Speech at the American Legislative Exchange Council, says execution of even a well-written freedom of speech policy can be problematic.

Both of the state’s largest universities — Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi — earned green ratings from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on their speech codes. This means that their policies don’t seriously imperil free speech.

Emmett worked at FIRE before joining ALEC.

“I remember when they contacted and reached out for help with their codes, which is great,” Emmett said. “It’s great to see schools take the initiative, contact organizations to make sure they have their written codes up to par. On paper, it looks like they’re doing it right. But there also are some schools with bad ratings, bad codes, whether they’re free speech zones or very vague or over broad regulations.

“Even the schools with great policies, you want to make sure they’re doing it the right way.”

Emmett says nationwide that vague speech codes at universities that are more concerned with offending an individual rather than protecting freedom of expression were designed with good intentions, but are now being used by politically savvy students to take over and change the culture of the institution.

One of the reasons for the emotional distress components of speech codes was to provide a calm, welcoming environment for veterans returning from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She said like most things, this was abused.

She also said that administrators who don’t like a particular subject can let their personal opinions get in the way of protecting all speech if the university doesn’t have strong procedures in place to prevent it.

“I feel for the administrators because they’re between a rock and a hard place,” Emmett said. “They’re dealing with a campus population that wants a certain level of comfort and they’re also paying tuition, which they need to be catering first and foremost to their consumer base.

“It’s easy for me to tell them to get over it when I sit here in the luxury of my office and I’m not actually dealing with a 19-year-old who’s offended that Ben Shapiro came to their campus.”

Not all of Mississippi’s institutions of higher learning receive such high marks from FIRE.

FIRE rates the University of Southern Mississippi and Alcorn State University as yellow, which means some of their policies can restrict a more limited amount of free expression or could be used to ban protected expression. Jackson State University received a red rating from FIRE, which means the university has policies in place that can clearly and substantially restrict protected speech.

Emmett, along with Zack Pruitt of Alliance Defending Freedom, were in Jackson this week for Mississippi Center for Public Policy’s Liberty Luncheon on campus free speech.

Mississippi’s civil asset forfeiture database gives citizens a window into the world of forfeiture.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy is performing an analysis of the data for the first 18 months the database law has been in effect and the biggest takeaways from it are the myriad unknowns.

First, here is what can be confirmed using only the database. The value of the 315 seizures added up to $2,314,648.24 or $7,490 per seizure.

Removing a large outlier forfeiture — the bust of vape shops in Rankin County for selling synthetic cannabinoids also known as spice by the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics that led to a more than $600,000 in forfeitures — and the average forfeiture value shrinks to $5,422.

Only three seizures were of $100,000 or more and three more had a value of at least $60,000. Only 25.1 percent of all forfeitures occurred on the state’s two primary drug corridors: Interstates 10 and 20.

As for the unknowns, there are plenty since the law requires only law enforcement agencies to list the description and value of the item seized, a copy of the notice to intent to forfeit, any petitions by property owners to contest the forfeiture and any judge’s order that would include those that cover final disposition of the seized property.

There are no requirements that law enforcement agencies list the type of drug that was involved with the seizure, the circumstances of the seizure or whether charges were filed in connection with the seizure.

Of the 315 forfeitures listed in the database up to December 31, only 137 listed the drug that led to the forfeiture. On the boilerplate notice of intent for forfeit used by many agencies such as the MBN, there is a blank line for listing what drug was involved. Most of the time, it was left blank.

Also, only 91 out of the 315 listed the circumstances that led to the forfeiture, such as a traffic stop or an outstanding felony warrant.

Some law enforcement agencies went above and beyond when it came to reporting requirements to maximize transparency.

The North Mississippi Narcotics Unit — which pools the resources of law enforcement agencies from five counties in the northern part of the state — includes the incident reports in all of its forfeiture documentation. From these, a reader can glean the circumstances of the seizure, the amount of contraband involved and the charges that were filed in connection with the seizure.

There were other law enforcement agencies who had the same laudable level of commitment to transparency: the police departments of Corinth, Prentiss, Byram, Kosciusko and Eupora and the sheriffs’ departments of Pearl River, Alcorn, DeSoto and Madison counties.

All included the incident reports in their forfeiture paperwork.

What law enforcement agencies are seizing is also interesting. Cash seizures represented 47.1 percent of all forfeitures. In two instances, they seized as little as $50.

There were 54 vehicles (average value of $4,974) and this represented 17.1 percent of all seizures.

As for weapons, law enforcement officers seized 63 rifles, 53 pistols and 12 shotguns. There were also 16 cell phones seized, with the vast majority being iPhones.

Last year, the Mississippi Legislature quietly allowed the law that authorized administrative forfeiture to expire. This type allowed law enforcement agencies to seize property with a value less than $20,000 and not even have to file paperwork with a court explaining the basis for the seizure.

There were 47 administrative forfeitures listed in the database, some of which came after the law that authorized them expired on July 1. The average administrative forfeiture was $6,038 and only 12 of the 47 was for $4,000 or more.

There have been some large busts, but most of the time when it comes to civil forfeiture in Mississippi that is not the case.

The Mississippi House passed a bill Tuesday that could allow the state’s electric power associations to provide broadband service to their customers.

On Monday, the House Public Utilities Committee voted to send the House Bill 366, known as the Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act, to the floor for a vote.

The bill was authored by House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) and it has several provisions that include:

“I’m not here to say this is a perfect bill,” said House Public Utilities Committee Chairman Jim Beckett (R-Bruce). “We’re not going to get everyone broadband overnight. It’s going to take a long time.”

Debate on the bill veered into a discussion over transparency with the finances of the EPAs and the membership of their boards, which are voted on by the customers.

State Rep. Robert Johnson III (D-Natchez) offered five amendments on the bill, with the first three amendments passed on voice votes. The first dealt with investor-owned utilities and the fact the act wouldn’t infringe upon their property or interests.

The second required the EPAs seeking to enact broadband service under the act to send notice of its elections to its board of directors to its customers. The last that passed concerned the information of customers via newspapers about the results of its board elections.

“When you’ve got EPAs that serve 1.8 million people in the state of Mississippi, more than half the state’s population, 60 percent are African-American and only 4.4 percent of the board membership,” Johnson said. “When you talk about women, it’s even less than that. I’m going to support this bill because the chairman (Beckett) did a good job.”

Johnson also tried to pin a reverse repealer clause on the bill, which would’ve brought it back for more work, and require EPAs offering broadband to provide quarterly financial statements to the Mississippi Public Service Commission. Both failed, with the fourth amendment defeated on a 71-42 roll call vote.

State Rep. Mark Baker (R-Brandon) accused Johnson of using the EPA amendments to improve his position regarding litigation regarding the EPAs and their finances.

The EPAs are not-for-profit corporations and are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The state’s two investor-owned utilities — Entergy and Mississippi Power — are regulated by the three-member elected Mississippi Public Service Commission.

Public Service Commission Chairman Brandon Presley, a Democrat, has pushed the issue of rural broadband and was on hand for the vote.

The pole attachment fees are what outside entities pay to the utility to use their infrastructure for running lines to consumers. Since the investor-owned utilities are regulated by Federal Communications Commission when it comes to their pole attachment fees, they’re far lower than the EPAs. The co-ops aren’t subject to pricing rules on pole attachment fees and theirs are conversely higher.

Putting a provision that keeps EPAs from giving their broadband entities a discount on pole connection fees would help the issue of unfair competition in suburban areas of the state served by EPAs and traditional broadband providers such as AT&T, Xfinity and C Spire.

The loan guarantees might be a back door for subsidies, either from state or national taxpayers.

According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, there is $690 million in loans and grants available for the Telecommunications Infrastructure Loan and Loan Guarantee Program. This program, administered by the Rural Utilities Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provides grants and loans for areas that lack high-speed broadband coverage.

A bill known as “The Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act” is moving fast through the House.

The legislation is designed bring broadband to every corner of Mississippi, so says its supporters.

Who can be against that? Likely not many members of the House. This bill will allow the cooperatives that brought electricity to rural Mississippi to do the same with high-speed internet.

But as with most policy, we should dig deeper beyond the title or the talking points before proceeding. Because this legislation leaves more questions than answers.

To begin, the mission of Electric Power Associations (EPAs), as defined by current law, is to make “electric energy available at the lowest cost consistent with sound economy and prudent management of the business of such corporations.”

Today, EPAs can lease their pole attachments to internet providers. However, because their rates are very high, significantly higher than the rates of investor owned utilities that are regulated by the state, it is cost prohibitive. That is a business decision made by both entities, but it is still an option.

While EPAs cannot provide internet services themselves, even without this legislation they can already create a separate entity and provide the services using their pole attachments.

The truth that everyone knows is that rural broadband is expensive. It has not been feasible in the private sector to offer a product at a price point people can afford or are willing to pay. That does not change because of this legislation.

While the initial focus of EPAs was rural electricity, they serve many suburban areas today as population shifts occurred. They would likely be the prime targets for EPAs, as they will be the easiest to reach, but many of those customers already have the option of AT&T, Xfinity, or C Spire.

Will an EPA run fiber for several miles to reach one or two houses at the end of a gravel road? And can they do that for $50 a month or whatever consumers believe is a reasonable price? Those are some of the questions to be asked.

Because, if it is not feasible as the market has shown, it seems inevitable that this plan will open the door for a ratepayer and state taxpayer bailout.

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