Editorial Roundup: Mississippi

Greenwood Commonwealth. January 12, 2022.

Editorial: Be Deliberate With Charter Schools

A legislative watchdog group that analyzes the performance of state agencies recently released a report about the funding of charter schools in Mississippi and the board that supervises them.

The report by PEER, whose formal name is the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, made several recommendations about state funding, better staggering of terms of office for charter school board members, and earlier decisions about charter school license renewals so that parents will have more notice about the following year.

What the PEER report thankfully did not address is whether Mississippi should make a significant overhaul to its charter school approval system, with the express goal of opening more charter schools.

Advocates of this action complain that in the nearly nine years since the Legislature set up guidelines and supervision for charter schools, only seven of them have opened. (One of those is in Greenwood — Leflore Legacy Academy.) They believe the state should be far more aggressive in offering alternatives in areas where public education is poorly rated.

Although seven charter schools is an unexpectedly low number, it is impossible to believe the Charter School Authorizer Board is willfully rejecting qualified applicants. The more likely explanation is that the board is rejecting applicants because it is not convinced that they have the resources to run a school, even a small one that starts out with a couple of grades.

Few would have predicted that Mississippi would have only seven charter schools today — five in Jackson and one in Clarksdale in addition to the one in Greenwood — that according to the PEER report educate just 2,417 students. Another one is scheduled to open later this year in Canton.

But maybe this low number isn’t such a surprise. Education, whether public, private or charter, is expensive. And running a school of any size is a demanding and difficult assignment.

The charter school board is right to tread carefully. Nothing could be worse for any community than to have a charter school approved by the state, only to have it close after a few years for poor management or any similar reason.

The impatience of charter school advocates is understandable. Arkansas, to cite just one example, has 75 charter schools — 10 times the number in Mississippi — though a lot of them are in larger cities such as Little Rock or in growing counties in Northwest Arkansas.

Mississippi, of course, doesn’t have a whole lot of large cities. And remember that Jackson, the state’s biggest city by far, has five of the seven existing charter schools.

The biggest need for education alternatives is in the rural counties and small towns that dot Mississippi. This, of course, is the biggest impediment to charter schools in the state. It’s harder to find strong school operators in these low-population areas, and this is a key reason why the charter school board is so selective.

The reason to have a charter school in the first place — and give it a large slice of the taxpayers’ money — is if it can produce better academic results than a traditional public school. If the board that authorizes charter schools doubts an applicant is capable of meeting that objective, it is right to pass on approving it.

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Tupelo Daily Journal. January 12, 2022.

Editorial: Are Mississippi leaders going soft on medical marijuana plan?

In 2020, 816,107 Mississippians voted for some kind of medical marijuana plan. That represented 68.5% of those who voted for or against medical marijuana — clear bipartisan support.

When asked what the medical marijuana plan should look like, 766,478 Mississippians voted for Initiative 65, which passed. It won with 73.5% over the legislative alternative. Again, clearly an overwhelming bipartisan margin.

By comparison:

— 756,764 Mississippians voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.

— 709,511 Mississippians voted for Cindy Hyde-Smith.

— 459,396 Mississippians voted for Tate Reeves in the 2019 general election.

— 524,757 Mississippians voted for Delbert Hosemann.

— And, just for fun, 4,371 Mississippians voted for Philip Gunn in his unopposed Republican primary for his House seat. (He wasn’t listed on the general election ballot, again unopposed.)

Also, let us note another astounding fact about the number of people who voted for medical marijuana in Mississippi. Those voting for any kind of plan and specifically for Initiative 65 represent approximately 40% of all registered voters in Mississippi — not just registered voters who voted, mind you, but every single registered voter in the state.

That many Mississippi registered voters have never agreed on anything at the ballot box before.

Yet despite the clear will of the people, Mississippi’s top three leaders this week gave less-than-enthusiastic support for passing a medical marijuana program that lawmakers have been working on for months. We cannot recall a single piece of legislation that has been given more public hearings and scrutiny than the creation of a medical marijuana program.

Gov. Tate Reeves, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Philip Gunn were ho-hum (at best) about the legislation as the legislative session opened Tuesday.

Hosemann said he wasn’t sure what the final bill looked like or a timeline for passing it through a committee. That’s smoke and mirrors with a side of bull hockey! Nobody knows what the final bill looks like because there isn’t one, but there is a latest proposal. And if there is no timeline in the Senate, it’s because the leader of the Senate — Delbert Hosemann — hasn’t set it.

But at least Hosemann says he wants the bill passed and expects that it will be. Gunn, while still tepidly supporting a medical marijuana bill, flat out said it wasn’t a priority for him. Instead, he’s focused on his pet income tax elimination bill. That’s a cop out. We get that Gunn wants to talk about his bill as much as possible, but the Legislature handles a multitude of issues every session. Gunn all but sidestepping questions about a medical marijuana program is a clear sign that — for whatever reason — he couldn’t care less if it passes or not.

Then there is Reeves. A vocal opponent of any medical marijuana program, he has lied and crawfished at every step of the process. His latest tactic is to argue over a minuscule difference in the amount of marijuana that can be prescribed to patients. He twists reality to make it sound like Mississippi is about to legalize recreational marijuana, which is an absolute falsehood.

After months of public hearings, legislative wrangling and negotiations over a proposed bill — more scrutiny to any single bill that we can remember — there is absolutely no excuse for the Legislature not to adopt a medical marijuana program immediately.

And given the overwhelming support from Mississippians — not in some poll but at the actual ballot box — state and legislative leaders who offer anything less than full support for this legislation do so at their own political peril.

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Columbus Dispatch. January 6, 2022.

Editorial: Approving raises now would be grossly irresponsible

Since the city’s 2022 budget meeting in August, city employee pay raises have been discussed by the Columbus City Council.

One version of the 2022 budget included pay raises, but a much-leaner version of the budget was ultimately approved after a $1.5 million clerical error was discovered.

Multiple times since the final 2022 budget was approved, pay raises have been discussed.

The question isn’t so much whether city employees should get a pay raise, but rather, when those raises should be implemented and how they will be funded.

Mayor Keith Gaskin said during Tuesday’s council meeting that he didn’t think the city had a clear enough picture of city finances to make a decision now, citing the surprise shortfall discovered late in the budget process, former CFO Milton Rawle’s embezzlement and the fact that the city’s books still don’t balance due to issues with reconciliation.

“I don’t think it’s fair to keep dangling possible raises out there when we do not know what our financial situation is,” he said.

We agree.

Some council members insist those raises must be implemented and the sooner the better.

“Let me make this clear,” Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “We are going forward with these raises. We can give you a little bit more time. But the raises are going forward.”

To move forward at this time would be grossly irresponsible, though.

Imagine going to the bank and asking for a mortgage loan. One of the first things the banker would want to know is your income and how much money you had saved for a down payment.

If your answer is, “I don’t really know,” your odds of getting that loan go to zero. Any reasonable person would understand that decision.

The city is in that situation now: It simply doesn’t have an accurate view of its current balances and doesn’t know how it will pay for raises annually.

In his argument in favor of waiting, Gaskin correctly noted the city simply doesn’t have a clear picture of its finances. According to prior reports, certain accounts haven’t been reconciled or balanced.

More importantly, no plan on how to fund the raises in future budget years has been offered. The current year budget is lean, and there’s little reason to believe next year will be different.

In order to fund a pay raise — which conservatively will cost more than $400,000 per year — the city will need to have more income or less expenses.

We haven’t heard any council members say what they intend to cut in order to pay for these proposed raises.

Regardless of when the raise happens, the council — and the public — needs a good idea of how much the proposed raise will cost the city. In explaining why we don’t have that number yet, City Human Resources Director Pat Mitchell has said it would be impossible to calculate the true cost of the suggested 75-cent per hour raise because of other costs associated with the raise, primarily overtime and benefits.

That’s an odd claim to make. Cities — and businesses — predict payroll and benefits every year when they make their budgets so the claim that the full cost of the raises can’t be quantified is puzzling.

Finally, we will point out this debate comes at a time when the city is still in the process of hiring a Chief Financial Officer, a qualified professional who will manage the city’s finances.

At the very least, it appears prudent that the council wait until that person is in place before considering an unbudgeted pay raise.

In truth, it may require even more patience than that. Until we have a full picture of the city’s finances, rushing ahead with pay raises without knowing its impact on the budget is not good policy.

The council members pushing for the raise are right when they insist that the cost of the raises can be calculated. But they are wrong on the bigger, more important issue.

The mayor’s camp is wrong in one detail, but right in its ultimate conclusion.

There will come a day when it is good policy to raise pay for city employees.

Today is not that day.

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