Category: Mississippi News

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mobile sports betting will remain illegal in Mississippi after legislative negotiators failed to advance a final proposal Monday.

The House and Senate passed versions of the Mississippi Mobile Sports Wagering Act earlier in the state’s legislative session. The bill would have allowed Mississippi to join the 30 other states where mobile sports betting is legal. Sports wagering has been permitted in the state for years, but online betting has remained illegal amid fears the move could harm the bottom line of the state’s casinos.

To assuage the concerns of casinos and lawmakers who represent areas where gambling is big business, the bill would have required betting companies to contract with brick-and-mortar establishments.

Estimates show Mississippi could bring in over $25 million a year in tax revenue, said Republican Rep. Casey Eure of Saucier, the bill’s prime sponsor. Legalization would also undercut the influence of illicit offshore sports betting platforms in Mississippi, which leads the nation in illegal online sports betting Google searches, according to data presented by lawmakers.

During legislative debates, some lawmakers raised concerns that gambling platforms would have no incentive to partner with smaller casinos, and most of the money would instead flow to the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s already bustling casinos.

A small group of negotiators had until Monday night to file a final proposal for consideration before the full Legislature. That deadline passed without a final product for lawmakers to consider.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi lawmakers are expected to vote this week on a proposal that would expand Medicaid coverage to tens of thousands more people, but it includes a work requirement that might not win federal approval.

The state House and Senate passed separate expansion plans earlier this year. With the four-month legislative session pushing into its final days, negotiators from the two chambers submitted a compromise moments before a Monday night deadline. They declined to answer questions after emerging from a closed-door meeting, but the proposal was filed in legislative clerks’ offices.

The plan would require the new Medicaid recipients to be employed at least 100 hours a month in a job that does not provide private health insurance. Or, they could fit into other categories, such as being a fulltime student or the parent of a child younger than 6.

If the federal government rejects Mississippi’s work requirement, the state Division of Medicaid would be required to continue seeking approval each year — an acknowledgement that a different federal administration might provide a different decision.

Georgia is the only state with a Medicaid work requirement, and it is suing the federal government to try to keep the mandate in place. The work requirement was approved by then-President Donald Trump’s administration, but the Biden administration announced in December 2021 that it was revoking the approval. That prompted Georgia officials to sue.

The federal health overhaul signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2010 allowed states to expand Medicaid, largely to people who work low-wage jobs without insurance. Mississippi is among the 10 states that have resisted expansion.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has said for years that he does not want to put more Mississippi residents on government programs. But dynamics in the Republican-controlled Legislature changed this year with the selection of a new House speaker, Jason White, who said expansion could help some of Mississippi’s financially struggling hospitals.

The House voted by a wide bipartisan margin in late February to expand Medicaid coverage to about 200,000 people who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or $20,120 annually for one person. Mississippi has about 3 million residents, and its Medicaid program covered 374,823 people in March.

In late March, the Senate passed its own pared-down version that would extend eligibility to people earning up to 100% of the federal poverty level, just over $15,000 for one person. Senate Medicaid Committee Chairman Kevin Blackwell, a Republican from Southaven, said about 80,000 people would become eligible for coverage but he thought about half that number would enroll.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi would ditch a complex school funding formula that legislators have largely ignored since it became law a generation ago and replace it with a new plan that some lawmakers say is simpler to understand, under a bill headed to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

A bill with the new formula passed the 52-member state Senate on Saturday with three votes in opposition, a day after it passed the House 113-0. Republicans control both chambers.

The new plan, called the Mississippi Student Funding Formula, would replace the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) — a formula that legislators have fully funded only two years since it became law in 1997.

House and Senate leaders said the new plan would give school districts a boost in funding for students who can be more expensive to educate. For example, extra money would be calculated for students who live in poverty, those with special needs or dyslexia, those learning English as a second language, or those enrolled in gifted programs or career and technical education programs.

“It’s clear. It’s concise. It gets money to our districts to help our students,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar said.

Reeves has not taken a public stance on the new formula, which legislators first released Friday.

Democratic Sen. Hob Bryan was instrumental in pushing MAEP into law. He said Saturday that legislative leaders should provide side-by-side comparisons of how much money school districts might receive under full funding of MAEP and full funding of the new formula, calculated over several years.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Top Mississippi lawmakers started negotiating Tuesday on what could become a landmark plan to expand Medicaid coverage to tens of thousands of people in one of the poorest states in the U.S.

But even with Republicans controlling both the state House and Senate, it’s far from clear that they will reach a compromise during the final days of their four-month session that is scheduled to end by early May.

Mississippi is among the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage to people who work low-wage jobs that don’t provide private health insurance. Expansion is an option under the federal health care overhaul signed into law in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has said for years that he opposes putting more people on government programs.

Expansion is getting its first serious discussion in the Mississippi Capitol this year because the new House speaker, Republican Jason White, says it is one of his priorities.

The House voted by a wide bipartisan margin in late February to expand Medicaid coverage to about 200,000 people who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or $20,120 annually for one person. Mississippi has about 3 million residents, and its Medicaid program covered 374,823 people in March.

In late March, the Senate passed its own pared-down version that would extend eligibility to people earning up to 100% of the federal poverty level, just over $15,000 for one person. Senate Medicaid Committee Chairman Kevin Blackwell, a Republican from Southaven, said about 80,000 people would become eligible for coverage but he thought about half that number would enroll.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators advanced bills Monday to give voting rights back to 32 people convicted of felonies, weeks after a Senate leader killed a broader bill that would have restored suffrage to many more people with criminal records.

The move is necessary due to Mississippi’s piecemeal approach to restoring voting rights to people convicted of felony offenses who have paid their debts to society. It also reflects the legacy of the state’s original list of disenfranchising crimes, which springs from the Jim Crow era. The attorneys who have sued to challenge the list say authors of the state constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.

To have voting rights restored, people convicted of any of the crimes must get a pardon from the governor or persuade lawmakers to pass individual bills just for them, with two-thirds approval of the House and Senate. Lawmakers in recent years have passed few of those bills, and they passed none in 2023.

“I certainly don’t think this is the best way to do it,” said Republican Rep. Kevin Horan of Grenada, who chairs the House Judiciary B Committee. “There comes a point in time where individuals who have paid their debt to society, they’re paying taxes, they’re doing the things they need to do, there’s no reason those individuals shouldn’t have the right to vote.”

Despite lawmakers’ dismay with the current process, some are trying to restore suffrage for select individuals. On Monday, lawmakers on House and Senate Judiciary committees passed a combined 32 bills. The bills were introduced after a House hearing on Wednesday highlighted the difficulties some former felons face in regaining the right to vote.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — As a child, Dau Mabil escaped war-torn Sudan and built a new life in Mississippi. This month, fishermen found the body of the 33-year-old Mabil floating in a river, prompting calls for a federal investigation into his disappearance and death.

Mabil, who lived in Jackson with his wife, went missing in broad daylight on March 25 after going for a walk on a trail connecting the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum with other city landmarks. His brother, Bul Mabil, cast doubt on initial autopsy results published Thursday, which a sheriff said did not uncover signs of foul play.

Bul Mabil said he is dissatisfied with the way authorities have handled the case.

“I can’t believe this would happen to someone who came here from a war-torn country,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. ”I was expecting much better government in this country. But this is the way the United States operates. It is so appalling.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, whose district includes Jackson, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a Justice Department investigation. Thompson said civil rights organizations had contacted his office about the case, and his letter described Mabil as an “African male, who is married to Mrs. Karissa Bowley, a white female.”

Family members and concerned citizens spent weeks searching for Dau Mabil, who was captured by a surveillance camera walking near the trail. In an interview, Bul Mabil said he raced to Jackson from his home in Houston on March 26 after hearing of his brother’s death from a family friend. He said he began looking into the case on his own, alongside the Capitol Police, a state law enforcement agency that operates in part of Jackson.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kenneth Almons says he began a 23-year sentence in a Mississippi prison just two weeks after graduating from high school, and one of his felony convictions — for armed robbery — stripped away voting rights that he still has not regained decades later.

Now 51, Almons told lawmakers Wednesday that he has worked hard and remained law-abiding since his release, and he wants to be able to vote.

“It would mean I am no longer considered a nobody,” Almons said. “Because when you don’t have a voice, you’re nobody.”

Mississippi is among the 26 states that remove voting rights from people for criminal convictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Mississippi’s original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who have sued to challenge the list say authors of the state constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.

Under the Mississippi Constitution, people lose the right to vote for 10 felonies, including bribery, theft and arson. The state’s previous attorney general, a Democrat, issued a ruling in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking.

In 1950, Mississippi dropped burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Attorneys representing the state in one lawsuit argued that those changes “cured any discriminatory taint,” and the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court agreed in 2022.

Two lawsuits in recent years have challenged Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement. The U.S. Supreme Court said in June that it would not reconsider the 2022 5th Circuit decision.

The same appeals court heard arguments on the other case in January and has not issued a ruling.

In March, the Republican-controlled Mississippi House voted 99-9 to pass a bill that would have allowed automatic restoration of voting rights for anyone convicted of theft, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, forgery, bigamy or “any crime interpreted as disenfranchising in later Attorney General opinions.” The restoration would occur five years after conviction or after release from prison, whichever is later.

Senate Constitution Committee Chairwoman Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune, killed the bill when she didn’t bring it up for consideration before a March 21 deadline. In response to questions Wednesday, Hill told The Associated Press she blocked it because “we already have some processes in place” to restore voting rights person by person.

Rep. Kabir Karriem, a Democrat from Columbus, led a House hearing Wednesday and said restoring voting rights “is a fundamental human rights issue.”

“Let us remember that the fight for voting rights is a fight for justice, equality and democracy itself,” Karriem said.

Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, served as an election commissioner before winning a House seat in 2019. She said a constituent called her upset one year because he went to his longtime precinct and his name had been removed from the list of registered voters. Summers found out the man had been convicted of a disenfranchising felony.

Democratic Sen. Hillman Frazier of Jackson filed a bill to restore the man’s voting rights, and the Legislature passed it. But Summers said some 55,000 Mississippians with felony convictions remain disenfranchised.

“It shouldn’t matter if you have a relationship with your legislator that you can get your voting rights restored,” Summers said.

More than 50 bills have been filed this year to restore voting rights for specific people. Legislators could consider those until the end of the four-month session, which is set for early May.