FOCUS: 2022 Elections • Housing & Evictions • #MSWelfare Scandal • Jackson Water • Abortion • Race & Racism • Policing • Incarceration
Both federal manager Ted Henifin and the Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba are warning that state politicians are attempting to take over Jackson’s water system, along with hundreds of millions in federal funds meant for repairing it.
Merit announced in September 2022 that the Joseph M. Still Burn Center would share the same fate as Mississippi’s last dedicated burn center in 2005. It closed in October 2022, and now its predecessor in Georgia is receiving many of the most serious cases that would have otherwise found stellar treatment in their home state. No other facility like JMS exists in Mississippi.
MFP has suffered immense growth in readers, journalistic reputation, impact and team size, even as we’ve had no staff turnover since 2020. Read our best and most-read stories.
Ted Henifin’s years of public utilities expertise made him the U.S. DOJ’s pick for leadership as Jackson’s new “interim third party manager,” a role with unique autonomy from both the City of Jackson and the State of Mississippi. He spoke to the Mississippi Free Press just ahead of a windfall of federal funds-and a dangerous winter storm.
Brett Favre sought Gov. Tate Reeves’ help to get state funds to pay for volleyball facilities that the former NFL star had vowed to personally fund at his alma mater, according to text messages the Mississippi Free Press obtained through a public-records request to the governor’s office.
The U.S. Department of Justice is establishing an “interim third party manager” for the City of Jackson’s beleaguered water system. That manager is charged with stabilizing Jackson’s water production and distribution facilities and bringing the capital city back into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Then-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour channeled $570 million in Hurricane Katrina housing recovery funds away from rebuilding housing for poor Gulf Coast residents and toward improving the state port at Gulfport. That’s vital context for $77-mllion TANF scandal, Ellen Ann Fentress writes.
Lawyers from the University of Mississippi’s Low-Income Housing Clinic have alleged a litany of egregious violations of housing law against complex owner Sunset Moore MS TC, LP, and manager The Millennia Companies, which is based in Ohio.
Between 2016 and 2019, the Mississippi Department of Human Services and nonprofits associated with it allegedly misspent more than tens of millions of dollars in federal Temporary Assistance For Needy Families funds that should have gone to the poorest families in the poorest state. More than $5 million of those funds went toward a volleyball-stadium project at the University of Southern Mississippi favored by retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre and $1.1 million went to Favre himself.
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The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).