Gaming is in good shape in Mississippi, as revenues are up for casino gaming by 3.32 percent in 2019 and the newly-formed lottery has an ambitious goal of paying back its borrowed seed money by the end of the fiscal year.
Officials from both the Mississippi Gaming Commission and the Mississippi Lottery Corporation briefed Mississippi House’s Gaming Commission at a hearing Tuesday.
Allen Godfrey, the executive director of the Gaming Commission, told the committee that while statewide gaming revenues are down from a high in 2007 of nearly $3 billion, the numbers improved slightly in 2019. Casinos earned $2.2 billion in revenue, up from nearly $2.13 billion in 2018.
The commission divides the state’s casinos into three regions: Tunica (northwest Mississippi), Lower River Region (Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez) and the Coastal Region.
While revenues for the river cities increased from $293 million in 2018 to $304 million in 2019 and improved from $1.24 billion on the coast in 2018 to $1.31 billion in 2019, revenues from the Tunica casinos declined from $592 million in 2018 to $582 million in 2019.
Most recently, Penn National Gaming closed the Resorts Casino Tunica on June 30 as the number of casinos in Tunica shrank from nine to six.
The gaming commission regulates more casinos (26) with a smaller staff (110 full-time employees) and a smaller budget ($9.2 million) than Louisiana (20 casinos, 178 employees), Indiana (13 casinos, 218 employees) and Pennsylvania (16 casinos, 305 employees).
Since 2010, the numbers of casinos has declined from 30 to 26 and the workforce declined from 24,000 employees to 19,000.
As for the lottery, corporation president Thomas Shaheen said that the lottery was able to start earlier than its planned December launch of scratch-off tickets and has a goal of paying off its starter loan of $15 million by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
He also said the lottery has generated sales of $12.4 million for the week that ended on February 8, with $10.9 million of that coming from scratch-off tickets. Despite only being on sale for a couple of weeks, Mega Millions ($672,677) and Powerball ($818,468) are already off a strong start.
Year to date, the lottery has generated $112 million in sales.
Shaheen said that the sales of the two will increase considerably when there are large jackpots at stake. He also said lottery tickets are for sale in all but one of the state’s 82 counties, but the lone holdout, Issaquena County, has a retailer application going through the background checks required before approval.
The lottery was authorized by an amendment to the state’s constitution in 1994, but it took until the 2018 special session of the legislature for the legislation to make it to the governor’s desk for signature.
It is supposed to provide the first $80 million in revenues for the State Highway Fund, with the excess going to the Education Enhancement Fund. Retailers will receive a six percent commission.
The gaming briefing was supposed to be a joint hearing with the Senate Gaming Committee, but debate on a controversial bill in the Senate kept the Senate members from attending.
That bill, Senate Bill 2257, would allow the State Auditor’s Office to examine tax returns of those receiving welfare benefits. It passed the Senate as amended with a two-year repealer that would force the legislature to take another look at it in two years before it expires.
The House has a similar bill that has yet to pass out of committee.
Last summer, tragedy struck in Oxford when 22-year-old Ally Kostial was violently murdered and found just miles from the Ole Miss campus. A member of the Greek community and active as a pilates and yoga instructor on campus, Ally’s death shook her community to the core. Mississippians, alum and students, have asked themselves since that day in July — How could this have happened at Ole Miss?
Some of Ally’s friends reported that Ally was pregnant with her alleged murderer’s baby. Some of her community believes her denying the choice of abortion led to the murderous rampage of her on and off-again boyfriend. It’s been reported that her own sorority sisters knew about her pregnancy, her choice to not abort, and the anger her alleged murderer felt that she was not planning on having an abortion.
Whether or not this was the case for Ally or this was the motivation for her brutal murder, one thing is clear — the Ole Miss student body did not know where to send an unexpectedly pregnant student.
Just miles from campus, a free, privately funded, confidential place for pregnant women offers life-saving services. Pregnancy Center of Oxford is a “warm caring, judgment-free environment” to receive medical-grade pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and options counseling that is designed to look for red flags in relationships like abuse and coercion. No matter the choice a mother makes — for parenting, adoption, or abortion, there are confidential and free services for women in Oxford.
This is one of over 40 pregnancy centers like its kind across Mississippi, one that saved American taxpayers $44 million in 2018.
In the wake of this tragedy, Ole Miss students Jack Dellinger and Lauren Moses were inspired to restart a pro-life group on campus that had died off in the last few years. The Ole Miss Students for Life exists to educate and dialogue with peers about abortion, provide resources to pregnant and parenting students, and empower the choice for life when their peers face unexpected pregnancies.
Summer Farrell, the Executive Director of Pregnancy Center of Oxford comments, “We are so grateful that the chapter has been renewed, trained, equipped, and empowered to move forward and provide education to fellow students facing an unplanned pregnancy. We are grateful to Sarah Zarr, the Southern Regional Coordinator with Students for Life, for investing in the Ole Miss campus.”
At a Mississippi Center for Public Policy panel discussion just a month after Ally’s death, a question came from the audience regarding resources at Ole Miss for pregnant women on campus. This question was like a call to action for Jack.
“My co-president and I have always been pro-life, but that tragedy was a wake up call to Lauren and me. It showed how abortion affects so many people around us. We just don’t normally see it.”
Since then, the Ole Miss group has held campus events, had meaningful, peaceful dialogue with those who agree and those who disagree on campus. They’ve had dozens of peers interested in joining their group.
Just last month, the co-presidents attended the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. This 47-year-old march was the largest ever, attracting over 225,000 people, with half of marchers estimated to be younger than 30 years old. President Donald Trump spoke at the event this year, becoming the first president to speak at March for Life.
The students then received apologetics and practical training for their group at the annual, National Pro-Life Summit, held by Students for Life of America, Live Action, Heritage Foundation, and Alliance Defending Freedom. They were joined by students from other campuses in Mississippi like Pro-Life MSU and Mississippi College Students for Life.
Less than a year later, this brutal tragedy has ignited a fire in our state. Oxford as a community and Ole Miss as a student body are prepared to serve women in a crisis like Ally Kostial may have been. The hope of these students and the pregnancy center community is that students know where to send their friends facing unexpected pregnancies. Pro-Life students at Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Mississippi College, and the over 40 pregnancy centers sprinkled across our state are free market resources, providing help to those in need.
Two of the conspirators in one of the largest public embezzlement cases in state history donated generously to the campaigns of numerous present and former state elected officials.
Nancy New and her son Zach New contributed $14,000 to several state candidates for office from 2017 to 2019, according to an examination of campaign finance records.
Gov. Tate Reeves, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, former state Attorney General Jim Hood, state Sen. Chris Johnson, former state Rep. Brad Touchstone, Secretary of State Michael Watson, former Commissioner of Agriculture and U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and former state Rep. Cory Wilson all received campaign donations from the News.
Reeves received $1,000 from Nancy New in 2017 and said he plans to either return the money to the state if they’re convicted or a worthy charity.
Hosemann’s campaign received $5,000 from the News from 2016 to 2019. He received $1,000 from Zach New on November 16, 2018 and $2,500 from Nancy New on the same day. She gave two contributions in 2017, $250 on May 17, 2017 and $1,500 on November 15. Nancy New’s first contribution to Hosemann on was on October 19, 2016 for $1,000.
Zach New gave contributions to Hosemann’s campaign of $500 on November 15, 2017 and May 22, 2019.
The News contributed $2,500 to Johnson in 2017 and 2018, while Hyde-Smith received $2,000 those same years. Wilson received $1,250 from the News in 2017 and 2018 while Touchstone received $1,000 in 2017.
Hood, who was the last Democrat to hold statewide office in Mississippi, received $1,000 in 2017.
Nancy and Zach New were arrested by agents from the state auditor’s office along with the former head of the Department of Human Services, John Davis, former DHS employee Latimer Smith, and an accountant for New’s non-profit Anne McGrew along with former wrestler Brett DiBiase for defrauding the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program for at least $4 million.
She was the director of the Mississippi Community Education Center and New Learning Resources, while her son Zach was the assistant executive director. She was also the founder of the New Summit School with locations in Jackson and Greenwood. A scholarship in her name for graduates of the schools is at Southern Mississippi University.
According to a scan of the Mississippi Community Education Center’s filings with the IRS, the organization received $26.7 million in government grants in 2017 and $12.9 million in 2016 after receiving nearly $2.4 million from government sources in 2015.
The IRS filings for the Mississippi Community Education Center said the organization’s purpose is for the promotion, improvement and expansion of community education through training seminars, consulting services and technical assistance.
We are often tasked with criticizing government leaders and their actions due to overreach of their constitutional authority, but we recognize that occasionally legislation does in fact take tangible steps to attempt to expand, rather than limit our freedoms, and when that happens it ought to be noted.
We already have a few bills proposed by a range of legislators, who, at least on the issue of alcohol policy, seem to be attempting an expansion of personal freedom rather than a detriment.
Three bills that have emerged in the Mississippi House and Senate deserve just such credit and attempt to offer a decisive empowerment of consumer market freedom, specifically in regards to alcohol policy. Senate Bill 2304, introduced by Sen. Philip Moran, would allow for wine and liquor to be sold by stores on Sundays. House Bill 4, introduced by Rep. Brent Powell, would increase the number of liquor store permits an individual could own from one to three. Senate Bill 2031, introduced by Sen. Robert Jackson, would reduce the tax for package retailers’ permits in specific locations.
These bills are less about access to alcohol than they are about recognizing how government has intentionally suppressed a specific market, crushing the potentially large economic impact of a major industry. We wouldn’t allow the state to take similar actions regarding other businesses, so why do we turn a blind eye to the state’s strong handing of liquor and wine stores?
The question must be asked of those political defenders of prohibition-era policies: where does the line get drawn? If stifling the sale of alcohol is inherently good, then why not ban all liquor and wine sales in the state, or shut down distilleries, or limit the hours of operation so severely that stores are forced to close?
There is no philosophically consistent line by which one can defend both the free market and that an entrepreneur seeking to expand his business cannot own more than one liquor store.
Much more reform is needed before we can truly consider ourselves a state that values freedom, especially when it comes to alcohol policy. Alcohol can’t be delivered by Door Dash, Grub Hub, Postmates, or other apps, shipped to you online, sold to you before 10am or after 10pm, made by you to share with a friend, or brought in any amount by you from out of state. There’s clearly a long way to go.
However, these bills and others present a commitment to expanding freedom in the state, just as every bill should.
The Mississippi Senate could be expanding the scope and cost of the state’s taxpayer-funded prekindergarten program after holding a hearing on the topic Wednesday.
Senate Bill 2286, sponsored by Sens. Brice Wiggins (R-Pascagoula) and Dennis DeBar (R-Leakesville), would expand the program to 25 percent of the state’s 4-year-old children by the 2022-2023 school year.
The bill would also increase the amount spent per student from $2,150 per student for a full-day program and $1,075 for a half-day one under present legislation to $2,500 and $1,125 respectively.
The bill would also have some reporting requirements on the program’s effectiveness. Since the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, state Sen. DeBar, is a co-sponsor, the bill likely faces few obstacles in a path to the Senate floor for a vote.
Whether Mississippi taxpayers are getting a solid return on their tax dollars with the state’s existing prekindergarten program is debatable. A report by the state’s PEER Committee (Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review) says there isn’t enough evidence to conclude whether pre-K programs provide a positive impact. It also questioned the curriculum used by the program on whether it had been properly compared against other similar curricula.
At a hearing Wednesday, prekindergarten advocates told legislators that the program needs to be expanded, both in scope and in cost to taxpayers.
Wendy Bracy is the superintendent of the Marion County School District. She told legislators that her district’s enrollment has increased because of the experience of parents with their children in the early learning collaborative program. The program was approved by the state Board of Education in 2018.
She also said that student outcomes in her district are also improving. Marion County schools were graded as B-rated district in the 2019 accountability grades, up from a C rating in 2018.
“State funding falls short of what these collaboratives really need,” said Rachel Canter, the executive director of Mississippi First. “What we do at this age can have life-long effects. Those with quality early learning, studies show, are far less likely to end up in the criminal justice system.”
What wasn’t mentioned was the phenomena of fade out, where the advantages of early learning slowly dissipate as a prekindergarten student is promoted to higher grades. A 2019 study of Tennessee’s program found that short-term, positive effects on early learners diminished by the time students reach the third grade.
The study said one likely factor for the fade out of former prekindergarten students had to do with the quality of schools, but it shows that prekindergarten isn’t a panacea for overcoming a poor quality elementary school education.
There’s also another bill in the legislature that would expand prekindergarten. House Bill 168 would create a voluntary, universal prekindergarten program in the state. Since it is authored by a Democrat, state Rep. Bryant Clark, its passage is unlikely in the Republican-dominated House.
The Mississippi Department of Education has asked for an increase of $3.2 million over last year’s appropriation of $6.7 million for the prekindergarten program in fiscal 2021, which starts July 1.
The state’s prekindergarten program was created in 2013 and taxpayers have spent more than $22 million on it since. The Mississippi Department of Education runs the program and 14 early learning collaboratives (a district or countywide council that submits an application that involves a public school district) and the program serves about 2,200 students.
MDE is prohibited from reserving more than 5 percent of the appropriation for administrative costs and the funds allocated can be carried over the next fiscal year if they’re not completely exhausted.
Collaboratives must match state funds on a one to one basis and those can include local tax dollars and federal funds.
Senate Bill 2304, sponsored by Sen. Philip Moran, would allow for the Sunday sale of alcohol in Mississippi.
Current Mississippi law prohibits liquor stores, the only stores that sell liquor or wine, from being open on Sunday, or Christmas Day. The Christmas Day prohibition and the 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. hours of sale would remain. The current laws interfere with a business owners’ ability to run their own business, while limiting consumer choices.
This, however, is just one small part of the state’s desire to regulate, and in many cases, prohibit, legal alcohol sales in the state.
While the internet, technological developments, and more have made the purchase and production of alcohol freer and easier in other states, Mississippi has denied its citizens personal liberty on this issue.
The state has discouraged craft beer production, overregulated alcohol distribution, and cracked down on the ability for citizens to privately produce alcohol. Permits are difficult to secure, and thus many businesses have been left in the dark, unable to expand or operate.
Mississippi could make considerable strides by entrusting in its citizens a greater personal responsibility and freedom when it comes to alcohol sale and production.
There is much the state could do, but this is a step in the right direction.
MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported.
Read SB 2304.
Track the status of this and all bills in our legislative tracker.
Should Mississippi continue to have one governing body over all state universities or are better options available that would be more responsive to local communities?
The Mississippi Center for Public Policy released a study today that analyzes higher education in the state of Mississippi. “Southern Exposure, A Look at Mississippi’s Public Colleges and Universities,” a report produced by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, takes a detailed look at the eight, public, four-year, undergraduate institutions in Mississippi on issues ranging from governance to curriculum.
“At a time when colleges and universities across the country are facing a variety of headwinds, much of their own making, there is no better time for Mississippi to take stock of how we’re doing. When we value something, we owe it to ourselves to give it a full examination so that we might improve it for the next generation,” said Jon Pritchett, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
“Mississippi is a proud state with much to offer our nation. University leadership faces the ongoing challenge of providing the finest education at the most affordable price, if the state is to realize its full potential. We hope that our report will help the Mississippi system optimize its crucial mission to prepare students for the demands of global competition, dynamic job markets, and informed citizenship,” said ACTA President, Dr. Michael Poliakoff.
In Mississippi, there is a single governing Board of Trustees for the State Institutions of Higher Learning, or IHL. While they have many responsibilities, one of the most important tasks that they can undertake is selecting a new president or chancellor. Last fall, the IHL came under fire for the lack of transparency surrounding the selection of Dr. Glenn Boyce as the new chancellor at Ole Miss, someone who was initially hired to conduct the presidential search.
Many began to wonder if this is a decision that could be made closer to home.
While Mississippi has a consolidated university system model, other options include the “one board, one institution” model where each institution has their own board of trustees or the “nested board governance model” where a system-level board of governors share responsibility with a campus-level board.
Local boards would be quicker to respond to market forces.
But transparency is an issue beyond the selection of a president. A review of the minutes from board meetings between May 2017 through June 2019 found that only three of the more than 500 votes were non-unanimous.
This may be the result of groupthink, where the board accepts almost any proposal laid before them or where every new initiative proposed by administrators is approved. Or, there may have been debate that is not reflected in the minutes, which raises an additional set of concerns about transparency and public accountability.
“Transparency is an essential part of good governance, and when trustees are making decisions, some of which necessarily will be controversial, the record of their debates needs to be available to the public whom the board ultimately serves,” the report reads.
Along with governance, the report also measures academic strength, intellectual diversity, and cost and effectiveness. Key findings from the report includes:
- Graduation rates among several IHL universities are unacceptably low.
- Athletic expenditures at the Ole Miss and Mississippi State University have skyrocketed, outpacing many schools throughout the nation. Some of Mississippi’s smaller schools have tried to keep pace, passing on these costs to their students.
- No school in Mississippi currently requires all its students to complete a course in American government or history. This deficit inevitably diminishes graduates’ ability to participate effectively in our democratic republic.
- Although free speech policies at most Mississippi universities are appropriate, this is not the case at Ole Miss. They have a Bias Incident Response Team with highly disturbing implications for freedom of expression and the due process rights of students.
- None of the IHL schools have yet adopted the Chicago Principles, a commitment to the importance of the unfettered and unobstructed pursuit of truth and knowledge as the defining value of a college or university. The Chicago Principles are widely seen as the gold standard for protecting free inquiry and free expression on college campuses, and Mississippi needs to join other eminent universities and university systems that have made this important public commitment.
Pritchett added, “We regard higher education as a significant issue in public policy. An awful lot of taxpayer money gets appropriated towards it and a large amount of family household expense can be tied to college tuition and expenses. That’s why we are delighted the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the nation’s leader in such matters, will be here in Jackson to share the results of this non-partisan examination.”
The full report can be found here.
House Bill 613, sponsored by Rep. Donnie Scoggin, will allow nurse practitioners to expand their scope of practice.
Currently, nurse practitioners are required to practice in a collaboration with a physician. This would exempt them from this requirement after working for 3,600 hours.
Mississippi limits the ability of nurse practitioners to practice up to their full training — what is called “full practice authority.” In particular, nurse practitioners who wish to open their own practice, or a free-standing clinic, must enter into a collaborative agreement with a physician. This agreement requires the supervising physician to be within a 75-mile radius of the nurse’s practice location. The supervising physician is then required to randomly review up to 20 of the nurse practitioner’s patient charts and meet with the nurse practitioner once every quarter. The typical charge for this minimal (not real time) standard of review is $74 a day or $2,250 a month.
Numerous studies demonstrate that nurse practitioners provide care that is at least as good as physicians, with some studies showing even better outcomes. In part, this may be because nurse practitioners are both less expensive and more accessible, especially for rural and low-income patients. Other evidence suggests that nurse practitioners tend to follow recommended guidelines more frequently and, also, spend more time with patients — practices associated with better patient outcomes.
That is why 24 states and the District of Columbia extend full practice authority to nurse practitioners, which means nurse practitioners can independently evaluate and treat patients.
Just as Certificate of Need laws are being used to protect hospital monopolies, professional licensing and scope-of-practice regulations are being used to protect individual provider monopolies.
MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported.
Read HB 613.
Track the status of this and all bills in our legislative tracker.
House Bill 526, sponsored by Rep. Steve Hopkins, and House Bill 628, sponsored by Rep. Randy Boyd, will prohibit municipalities from restricting free speech activities within the vicinity of a medical facility.
This is a response to the city of Jackson’s ordinance that was adopted last year and is designed to prevent individuals from engaging in free speech outside of the state’s only abortion facility.
That ordinance bans individuals who are near health facilities from approaching within eight feet of any person without consent, for the purpose of engaging in various forms of speech such as counseling, education, or distributing leaflets; bans people from congregating or demonstrating within 15 feet of the abortion facility, and bans any amplified sound. Violations of the ordinance could result in fines of up to $1,000 and 90 days in jail.
Shortly after the city adopted the ordinance, the Mississippi Justice Institute filed suit against the city, arguing that the prohibition violates free speech rights.
While the issue of abortion clouds the judgment of many on this issue, free speech – whether you agree with the issue or not – is something that should be encouraged, and protected.
MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported.
Track the status of this and all bills in our legislative tracker.