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 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.

A pharmaceutical company that is closing a Mississippi drug plant received money from taxpayers for another facility in the state.

AmerisourceBergen will be shuttering its Cleveland PharMEDium plant, laying off 140 workers, but the Pennsylvania-based company received $1,150,000 from several Mississippi Development Authority programs to move a distribution center to Olive Branch, where the $48 million facility employs 129 workers.

The DeSoto facility received $600,000 from the Development Infrastructure Program, which builds and repairs publicly-owned infrastructure, such as roads, for new and expanding businesses. If AmerisourceBergen were to miss its job creation goals, the company would have to repay the grant. 

Under the DIP program, companies aren’t required to make an investment commitment. 

AmerisourceBergen received $500,000 in grants from the Mississippi ACE Fund, which like the DIP program, can be clawed back if the company doesn’t meet job creation goals. The MDA calls this fund a “deal-closing fund” and this money can be used to relocate equipment, provide employee training or building improvements.

AmerisourceBergen also received $50,000 for training under the Workforce Training Fund in 2017.

AmerisourceBergen is also participating in the Advantage Jobs Incentive Program that provides a rebate of 90 percent of Mississippi payroll taxes withheld to qualified employers for 10 years.

The Cleveland plant was part of a 2015 acquisition by AmerisourceBergen of Illinois-based PharMEDium for $2.575 billion. The transition hasn’t been the smoothest for the parent company.

The company said in a first quarter filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it likely won’t restart production this year at its Memphis PharMEDium facility where it laid off 225 workers in January. 

Both the Memphis and Cleveland plants are compounding facilities that mix drugs in syringes and intravenous bags for sale to hospitals, which see cost savings from not having to do them in-house. 

PharMEDium also has facilities in Dayton, New Jersey and Sugar Land, Texas.

Production at Memphis was suspended by AmerisourceBergen in December 2017 after an inspection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found issues with sterility with syringes made at the facility. The company said in its SEC filings it is enacting corrective measures to fix the problem.

The company issued a voluntary recall in December 2017 on some of its products because of a lack of assurance in their sterility. 

The company received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee in November 2017 for documents about lab testing of a certain type of syringe made at the facility. 

The Mississippi cultural retail attraction program died in the Mississippi legislature in 2014, when the authorizing law expired without passage of an extension. Despite this end, one last holdout project is still alive and could receive more than $96 million from the program.

The Galleria received its third extension from the Mississippi Development Authority in July that moves the deadline for the start of construction to 2022. That’s nine years after the project was authorized in 2013 and eight years after the program ended.

The Gulf Coast Galleria is being developed by Coast developer Bob Mandal and Rise Partners of Chattanooga — which took over for original partner CBL Properties — at a site located at the junction of Interstates 10 and 110, which connects the primary artery with downtown Biloxi and the beaches at its terminus at U.S. 90.

There is some activity at the site, which has now been cleared. Two car dealerships owned by Mandal face I-10 and the city of D’Iberville has expanded D’Iberville Boulevard, which runs through the heart of the site before crossing I-10.

The project was authorized on December 19, 2013 by the MDA, with a minimum required investment of $50 million and an estimate of a $320 million capital investment by the developers.

The developers received their first extension from the MDA on December 17, 2015 that gave them a 60-day extension. 

The second was on January 11, 2016 that gave the developers until December 19, 2019 to begin construction. 

The latest one was approved by the MDA on July 27, 2018 and it expires on December 19, 2022.

Under the cultural retail attraction program, Mississippi returns 80 percent of the sales tax revenue to the developer until the total reaches 30 percent of construction costs. Each retail project in the program must offer either $1 million worth of state-related art, historic markers or audio-visual equipment, or host space for the MDA for 10 years for tourism promotion purposes.

There are two other projects that are receiving money under the program.

The $113 million DeSoto MidSouth Tourism Project LLC, which built the Tanger Outlets Southaven, has earned $6,972,588 of a possible $33,990,000 as of October 2018.

The Outlets of Mississippi in Pearl could receive up to $24 million on an $80 million investment.

There were other projects covered under the cultural retail attraction project that didn’t pan out, including one on property owned by the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority in Rankin County. It was approved for a rebate of $48.8 million for a $162.5 million investment.

The Mississippi legislature passed Senate Bill 2463 in 2013, expanding the existing sales tax rebate program to include cultural retail attractions. A bill to reauthorize the program died in the 2014 legislative session after the MDA approved more than $150 million in possible rebates.

With several projects still approved for the incentive program, there were several attempts by state Sen. David Blount (D-Jackson) to put the final nail in the cultural retail attraction program’s coffin. 

He filed a bill in 2016 to kill cultural retail projects that weren’t complete by July 1 of that year. It failed in committee. He tried again with an amendment to another bill, which increased the amount of the historic structure tax credit, to accomplish the same task. It passed the Senate, but was eliminated in conference.

The Mississippi legislature passed Senate Bill 2463 in 2013, expanding the existing sales tax rebate program to include “cultural retail attractions.” A bill to reauthorize the program died in the 2014 legislative session after the MDA approved more than $150 million in rebates.

Tying annual increases of K-12 education spending to the price of consumer goods for urban consumers, depending on which measure is used, could become very expensive for taxpayers.

Increasing K-12 education spending commensurate with the 18 percent cumulative rate of inflation suggested by public education advocates would’ve added up to $1.042 billion in additional spending between 2007 and 2017. These figures include federal, state and local revenue.

Synchronizing increases in K-12 spending to the Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (21.9 percent cumulative rate of inflation) would’ve hit taxpayers with $1.228 billion in additional spending during that time.

The Consumer Price Index measures the average change, over time, in prices paid by urban consumers for various goods and services, including food, beverages, health care, insurance, housing, and energy. 

That includes electricity rates and gasoline prices.

Mississippi, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, has 51.2 percent of its total population living in rural areas.

The furor over inflation and whether K-12 spending needed to be more closely tied to it came out of a report issued by state Auditor Shad White’s office. 

The report by the auditor’s office showed that the growth in K-12 spending on administrative and other non-classroom costs from 2007 to 2017 outpaced the increase in the amount spent in the classroom. 

According to the report, administrative costs increased 17.67 percent during the decade, while instruction costs increased 10.56 percent.

The amount of money being spent overall (federal, state and local) on K-12 education in Mississippi increased 12.89 percent from 2007, when it was $4.9 billion, to 2017, when it was up to $5.5 billion.

This inflationary data might not be applicable to government spending on K-12 education, except in a few cases. 

According to BLS data, the annual rate of increase for food and beverage prices for urban customers averaged 2.3 percent.

Diesel is needed to fuel school buses and national retail prices, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, averaged $3.17 per gallon due to five years of prices of $3.80 and higher in the South. 

Diesel prices from 2013 to 2017 decreased from $3.92 to $2.65, a drop of 32.39 percent.

White’s report isn’t the first time that alarms have been sounded over increasing administrative costs. 

The Joint Committee for Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) released a report in 2015 that showed spending from 2005 to 2015 on instruction decreased by 3.2 percent while that spent on administration increased by 13 percent.

According to data from the state’s Legislative Budget Office, federal and state taxpayers have spent about $3.426 billion on average in the last four years for K-12 education, which averages about 16.3 percent of the state’s total budget when all revenues (general fund, special funds and federal funds) are considered.

These figures don’t include local property taxes and other revenue, such as 16th section land lease income.

A report by State Auditor Shad White’s office says that despite decreases in both the number of K-12 students and teachers in the last decade, spending on administration and non-instructional costs grown faster than classroom costs.

Administrative costs have ballooned by 17.67 percent ($822 million to $968 million), while instructional costs have grown in comparison by 10.56 percent, increasing from $2.2 billion in the 2006-2007 school year to $2.4 billion in 2016-2017. 

Administrative costs are defined by the report as including superintendent and district spending, principal and school office costs not related to instruction, operations and maintenance of district offices, non-student transportation, supervision and training of non-instructional staff and information services.

This increase in non-instructional spending has occurred despite a large decline in enrollment in Mississippi’s public schools. There were 494,135 students enrolled in the 2006-2007 school year and that shrunk to 481,428 in 2016-2017, a decrease of 2.5 percent. 

That decline is even more pronounced this school year, as there are now 4.75 percent fewer students enrolled in Mississippi public schools as compared with the 2006-2007 school year.

The number of teachers has also declined 8 percent, going from 34,390 in 2007-2008 to 31,662 in 2016-2017.

According to the report, if the amount of federal, state and local money spent on outside the classroom spending decreased every year at the same rate of the decline in the number of students, Mississippi taxpayers would be spending $358 million less annually on these costs. 

Doing this would’ve increased the percentage of K-12 spending in the classroom from 57 percent to 63 percent of all education spending.

Just keeping these costs the same as 10 years before would’ve meant there’d be $285 million more to spend annually on instruction or teacher pay hikes.

A decade ago, taxpayers spent $10,597 per student in public schools, with $4,608 spent per student outside the classroom. In 2016-2017, that amount was up to $12,390 per student, with $5,411 of that spent on non-classroom expenditures. That represents an increase of $803 per student.

The biggest percentage increase in the outside the classroom spending accounts were administrative staff services (up 113 percent) and information services (103 percent).

One example of this administrative bloat is in the Jackson Public School District. This district has earned an F grade in the Mississippi Department of Education’s annual accountability grades in the last two years, yet the state’s second largest school district has 265 central office employees or 96 per each of the district’s more than 25,000 students. 

DeSoto County, the state’s largest school district with 34,000 students, has a central office with 141 positions or about 241 students per administrator.

There are student enrolled in the Mississippi Prepaid Affordable College Tuition Program and heading off to college that are the same age as the plan’s net deficit: 17 years old. 

According to the most recent report by State Treasurer Lynn Fitch’s office that was released in June 2018, the unfunded liability of part of the plan is $127 million and growing at the rate of 6.3 percent per year. The plan, if the deficit continues, will be insolvent before the end of fiscal 2028.

The problem for taxpayers is that they will be on the hook for the deficit, as the plan is guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the state.

One of the reasons for the plan’s financial woes is the rapid increase in the cost of attending college.

According to the latest report from the College Board, the national average tuition and fees at a public four-year school have increased 69.93 percent from $6,020 in 1998-99 to $10,230 this year. The plan assumes a 5.5 percent annual increase in the cost of attendance in its financial projections, which about 2.2 percent more than the national average cost increase.

MPACT is what is known as a 529 plan, which have tax advantages are designed to encourage saving for future educational costs. There are two types of these plans: prepaid tuition plans and educational savings plan. MPACT is the former and parents pay into the plan, which then covers tuition and other expenses.

In 2012, the board that manages MPACT voted to stop accepting new enrollees because of the plan’s financial woes. After an audit in 2013, the plan was split into two plans: Legacy and Horizon and began accepting new enrollees.  

As of June 2018, the Legacy plan has $278 million in assets, but has $405 million due in the form of tuition and expenses to be paid to plan participants. 

MPACT does have investment income, but like with pension funds, the decade-long bull market hasn’t generated enough returns to smooth over the annual shortfall. A 2016 study found that the plan would be insolvent by 2025 and that date has been pushed back three years thanks to better-than-expected investment returns.

Legacy plans were those purchased from the plan’s creation in 1996 by the legislature until 2012. Despite an expected rate of return on investment of 6.8 percent, the plan is only 69.67 percent fully funded. 

Those numbers will likely get a lot worse, since Legacy plans are closed to new enrollees.

According to 2016 projections, the Legacy plan will have a $401 million deficit by 2032 and a $628 million hole by 2038. 

The Horizon plans were those purchased since 2015. These plans are fully funded, up to a rate of 113.08 percent. Those plans have $35 million in assets and $29.4 million due for tuition and fees. The Horizon plan assets will not be used to pay Legacy benefits and vice versa.

MPACT was nearly fully funded as recently as fiscal 2007, when it was 95.2 percent. That fell to 84.3 percent as MPACT’s market value dropped from $207 million to $192 million.

There are differences in the plans that are designed to help the plan’s long-term financial health. For one, the Horizon plans are anywhere from 60 to 90 percent more expensive than their corresponding Legacy equivalent.

Legacy plans pay 100 percent of public in-state undergraduate tuition rates and mandatory fees. For out-of-state or private institutions, MPACT pays a rate equivalent to a weighted average of tuition and fees at Mississippi public colleges and universities. 

Horizon contracts are the same as Legacy ones for in-state public community colleges and universities and the weighted average for out-of-state or private institutions. Where Horizon contracts differ are specialty courses of study. If the specialty course of study exceeds the standard undergraduate tuition rate at the institution, MPACT won’t cover all of it.

Also, Legacy plan holders have 10 years to use their benefits from their projected college enrollment date. Horizon contracts are allowed up to eight years.

If the plan was eliminated by the legislature, any qualified beneficiary that was accepted by either a state university or community college or a private, accredited institution either in state or out of state and within five years of enrollment would be entitled to the complete benefits of the program.

Any other contract holders who didn’t meet the above criteria would receive a refund of the principal paid into the program, plus interest.

Today is a day to celebrate, if that’s the right word, as it is represents how long Americans have had to work in 2019 to pay the nation’s tax burden. It is now known as Tax Freedom Day. Congratulations, you are now able to keep the rest of the money you earn.

In 2019, Americans will pay $3.4 trillion in federal taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, and $1.8 trillion in state and local taxes. Income taxes, federal, state, and local, take the longest to pay, followed by payroll taxes, sales and excise taxes, and property taxes. 

While Tax Freedom Day came before February 1 one hundred years ago before steadily moving later in the year throughout the 20th century, it has been moving in the right direction over the past few years. It was April 24 in 2015. 

And on another bright side for Mississippians, we have actually been free since last week. New Yorkers, on the other hand, won’t be free until May 3. 

That greedy, no-good 1 percent

Who pays most of the taxes in America? Though it makes a good talking point, the “1 percent,” or the rich in our country, don’t get by with paying little to no taxes while the working man or woman has to foot the bill for everything. Higher income earners don’t pay lower rates as some like to claim.

These comments might win you the Democratic nomination for president, but we can look at the actual data provided by the federal government and see the true story. 

In 2016, the top one percent of income earners paid 37 percent of federal income taxes despite earning less than 20 percent of the total adjusted gross income in the country, and, obviously, being just one percent of earners. The top one percent also paid a federal tax income rate of 26.9 percent. 

Ninety-seven percent of income taxes were paid by just half of all taxpayers. Meaning the bottom 50 percent of earners paid just three percent of total income taxes. They also had the lowest tax rate of 3.7 percent. 

That is because America has a very progressive tax structure. The more you make, you don’t just pay more in taxes proportional to your earnings, you also pay a higher percentage as a reward for your hard work.

So celebrate your Tax Freedom Day, maybe you can go and get a drink, and don’t worry about that 7 percent sales tax and the 1-3 percent local sales on top of that. 

If you’ve gambled at a Mississippi casino at a dealer-served game or gotten a drink served by a bartender, your tax dollars probably contributed heavily to their education.

According to a report by non-partisan fiscal transparency group Open the Books, the Crescent City School of Gaming and Bartending — with campuses in Biloxi, Las Vegas, Memphis and New Orleans —received $9.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Education from 2014 to 2017. 

The school offers a three-week bartending course, a 12-week beverage management course, and its gaming department trains potential dealers in blackjack, roulette, poker, baccarat and craps. 

Mississippi as a state, according to the report, received $1.6 billion from the Department of Education in fiscal 2017, which included $241 million in direct payments, $480 million in grants and $912 million in loans. 

California received the most, with $18.5 billion, followed by Texas ($12.5 billion), New York ($11.9 billion) and Florida ($9.49 billion).

The U.S. Department of Education spent $115 billion last year, with $5.9 billion going to the 25 colleges and universities with the largest endowments (a combined quarter trillion in existing endowments).

This included $2.3 billion in student loans in fiscal 2015 to 2016 and $1.2 billion in fiscal 2017 to 2018. 

The Department of Education admitted that overpayments accounted for $11 billion of the money spent on funding higher education, with $7.1 billion in overpayments on direct loans and $4.1 billion as Pell Grants.

The Crescent City School of Gaming and Bartending wasn’t the only non-traditional school to receive money from the Department of Education. A school for video game development education, the DigiPen Institute of Technology, received $51.4 million from fiscal years 2014 to 2017.

The Professional Golfers Career College received $4.5 million between fiscal years 2014 to 2017 and the school teaches golf shop operations, methods of golf instruction, golf rules, and course management.

The Department of Education also paid $74.2 million from fiscal years 2014 to 2017 to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, $43.5 million during that same time period to the a fashion college called the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, and $10.4 million to a gunsmithing college called the Sonoran Desert Institute.

The 50 lowest-performing community colleges received $923.5 million in federal student loans and grants. Ten of these schools had an average graduation rate of 12 percent.

According to the report, for-profit colleges received $10.5 billion in fiscal 2017, with 10 of these schools receiving 30 percent of the funding, which included grants, direct payments, contracts and student loans.

Seminaries received $815 million from fiscal 2014 to 2017.