Going Rogue

On his county-provided laptop, Phil Fisher has replaced the standard mouse icon with a sword. A former Marine and a current brigadier general in the Mississippi Army National Guard, Fisher has a bit of the warrior in him, and his stint on the Hinds County Board of Supervisors has been marked by vocal opposition to many of the board’s actions.

Fisher, 55, lives in Clinton and represents District 4 of Hinds County, which covers much of Terry, Byram and Clinton. He served as a Clinton alderman from 1993 to 2008 before taking the county supervisor post in January 2008. An avowed fiscal conservative, he distributes monthly memos to constituents and newspapers on the county’s financial situation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the news is usually bad. During board meetings, he types notes in red into his copy of the meeting agenda.

Fisher recently spoke to the Jackson Free Press about his time on the board.

I want to start by going back to the $6.5 million loan to cover payroll that the majority of the board wanted to take out at the Oct. 19 board meeting. It sounded like you were pretty surprised to have it come up at the meeting.
I guess with my military background, I’m not keen on being presented one option up or down, because there are other options. But that’s what they presented, and I’m not going to borrow money to bail the county out of this problem.

Where did you get this fiscal conservatism bug? You grew up in Jackson like most of the supervisors, and some of them seem less concerned with this.
I am a Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan conservative. I really believe that our government, at all levels, is too big. And I really believe that it interferes with the private sector and that the private sector should drive the economy forward. The real essence of America is choice. I don’t like the idea of a large body pushing down on people forcing them to pay into a system that they either derive little benefit from or see no value in.

The county is considering a memorandum of understanding with the Mississippi Youth Justice Project that would establish some expected reforms at the county’s youth detention center. How do you feel about the idea?
If you involve a group that is unanswerable to the people—they’re not elected, they’re not appointed—they will have authority to require the county to expend funds. And I don’t agree with that.

How exactly could they require the county to expend funds?
Through threat of a lawsuit.

Can’t they already do that?
I guess they could. I think there’s a mechanism in place that the county has used, and I think we should continue on with the same mechanism that we had. We have some management issues to address, of course, and some other things that we need to work on and do. But my biggest concern is once the (Youth Justice) Project gets in the door, they’re just going to expand and expand and expand. It’s one more person in the room to have to try to go through the issues with.

I remember in the spring seeing a sign you hung in front of your desk.
“Words Do Not Equal Action.”

Where did that come from?
I made it up. What it means is everybody in these positions talks a good story. Let me give you an example: We’re going to have a hiring freeze in the county. … Board votes unanimously for it. This is going to hold us to the fire on these reductions we’ve had. When you reduce 74 jobs, there’s a lot of emotion, there’s a lot of pain in that. Nobody does that with happiness in their heart, but if you’re going to do that, in my mind you have to hold firm in order to be fair to those who were let go.

So in the first 18 days of October, this board of supervisors has re-hired or established 18 positions. It’s a farce. This gets back into having the courage to say (to department heads), “We voted for a hiring freeze.” Words mean things, or you have to justify to Department A why Department B got to bring somebody on and you had to let somebody go.

Those 18 positions: Does that includes the most recent eight they approved to hire at the youth detention center?
There’s eight. There’s (another) five through a COPS grant. There’s four who were saved by the county administrator on Oct. 1, and there was one at the District Attorney’s office.

The COPS grant: Does it use county money?
It will in four years. There’s no problem with the COPS grant. It’s not a bad idea to bring on more law enforcement officers. The grant pays for three years. The problem is that after three years, you’ve got to have the money. If you want to do this, then you need to set a mechanism in place that pays for it. … This was just, “get my name in the paper, let me be a great guy, let the next guys worry about it.” That’s how we got here—previous boards passing along expenses to the next board, with no way to pay for them, and without concern for how to pay for them. That’s how we got to the point, now, that we’ve got a $7,000 surplus. Seven thousand dollars.

That won’t pay for much more than groceries.
Most households in Hinds County can’t get through a month with that. Certainly two months. I’m trying to put this thing in realistic perspective. It’s a $54 million budget, and we have a $7,000 surplus. And, oh, we just hired 18 new people. And, oh, we just borrowed $6.5 million, and let’s not forget about the previous $1.5 million (borrowed in September to balance last year’s budget). And let’s not also forget that we took $2.5 million out of (Emergency Operations Center Director) Larry Fisher’s EOC fund so that we can make payroll this month. And we hired 18 new people? Where is the sanity here? There’s a big picture here, and if people keep piece-mealing away at it, it’s a joke.

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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.