Jackson, Miss. (Northside Sun) – Delbert Hosemann filed qualifying papers Thursday at the state Republican Party headquarters to seek a second term as lieutenant governor.

Hosemann announced his reelection bid before an overflow crowd in the party headquarters conference room. The entryway to the headquarters building also was elbow to elbow with people who could not get into the conference room.

“It is a real honor to be here,” said Hosemann, who added he “was mesmerized” to see the eagle on top of the Capitol building every day and still could not believe he had an office in the building.

Hosemann will be making stops throughout the state in the coming days to tout his accomplishments and his reelection bid.

The large crowd at the party headquarters could be conceived as a show of force by Hosemann. State Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, who lost a close Republican Party primary for the U.S. Senate in 2014 against incumbent Thad Cochran, has indicated that he might challenge Hosemann.

At Thursday’s announcement about 15 Republican senators flanked Hosemann. A large number of senators also was in in the entryway, unable to get into the room where the announcement was made.

Echoing the comments of Gov. Tate Reeves, who qualified to seek re-election earlier this week, Hosemann said the state “was in the best financial shape we have ever been in.” He said a lot of Republican politicians worked to put the state on sound financial footing. Like Reeves, he did not mention the billions of federal COVID-19 relief funds that have spurred the Mississippi economy.

Hosemann was introduced by his son, Mark, who said his father was a doer, not a talker.

“Dad focuses on the positive. He focuses on the potential,” he said.

Shane Quick, who garnered 15% of the vote against Hosemann in the 2019 Republican primary for lieutenant governor, has qualified to run again this year.

Hosemann served three terms as secretary of state before running and winning the office of lieutenant governor.

View Original Story

Jackson, Miss. (Clarion Ledger) – Some politicos say the agenda during an election year is always pared down to bare necessities. Not this year.

Jackson, Miss. (Clarion Ledger) – With the Mississippi legislature’s next regular session less than two weeks away, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann laid out a number of priorities he’d like to see pass in 2023.

Atop his list were healthcare and infrastructure, with education and taxes also being mentioned during a meeting with news media Wednesday.

Hosemann, who leads the state Senate, said people often have preconceptions about legislative sessions during election years. State offices, including his own, will be up for grabs in November.

“Historically people say, well your fourth year during an election year not much happens, well, not here. We don’t do that. As you know this legislature has taken on just about everything it possibly could take on, and we’re going to take on a bunch more this coming year,” Hosemann said.

Hosemann addressed healthcare on multiple fronts. A Senate committee, which he called and is chaired by Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, has been studying ways to aid women, children and families following the near-total ban on abortion in Mississippi.

While the study committee cannot pass legislation directly, Hosemann said a number of its recommendations will be priorities of the Senate as a whole. Those include postpartum Medicaid expansion, which the Senate has passed a number of times in the past only to see if fail to gain support in the House.

Hosemann cited a study out of Texas, which found their expansion of Medicaid to women who are 60-days postpartum had positive impacts on a number of health metrics, including contraceptive use which is important to prevent potentially dangerous back-to-back pregnancies. Hosemann said the study “shows some pretty dramatic positive results.”

“We passed postpartum last year three times. I anticipate we will pass it again,” Hosemann said. “I think we’re only one of two that haven’t done this, two states, so I don’t want to be last, and I certainly don’t want to ignore the fact, the statistical fact, that women have better healthcare, and better mental healthcare, and more than likely that their babies are getting better care because their moms are. So, we’ll pass that again this year and I’m very hopeful.”

Some other potential bills to come out of the study committee include changes to the state’s foster care and child support laws. One specific change Hosemann proposed was the ability to deduct gambling winnings for individuals who owe child support.

Hosemann also addressed the crisis facing Mississippi’s rural hospitals. He said he met with stakeholders at Greenwood Leflore Hospital on Friday. Leaders at that hospital, which Hosemann called “the canary,” have told its employees that it is doing what it can to remain open until the session starts when aid from the legislature might come. Hosemann said even with significant reductions in services, including eliminating its OB/GYN services, the hospital is still projected to operate $20 million in the red.

“That is indicative of what we are facing in Mississippi,” Hosemann said. “We have a critical need in Mississippi on our hospitals.”

He said the legislature is likely to consider short-term relief for hospitals like Greenwood, but that the state should also reconsider its healthcare system more broadly.

“We’ve got to make some strategic decisions about how, how and how much and where, we are going to fund (healthcare),” Hosemann said.

Another key aspect of Hosemann’s priorities is infrastructure. The legislature allocated a record amount of money towards infrastructure the last session, mostly coming in the form of American Rescue Plan Act funds that were sent to local governments to match what they had set aside for water and sewer. The state left about $350 million unspent, and Hosemann said there will be an opportunity for local government to again apply for matching funds from that total.

That opens the door for some of that money to be spent on Jackson’s ailing water system. Jackson put up $37 million last year, which the state matched to increase the total to $74 million. Hinds County, however, did not apply for ARPA funds last year.

“I was disappointed. I made my disappointment known to just about everybody that would answer or listen to me,” Hosemann said. “I understand they have applied now, and that they will apply for $20 million for Jackson. I have not seen that application, but that’s what was promised to me, so we will match that.”

If Hinds County does apply for $20 million, Hosemann said the state’s match would bring the total ARPA funds going to the county to $40 million, bringing the total for the city and the county to more than $100 million from ARPA. That comes in addition to the $600 million in federal funds that are reportedly set to be included in the federal omnibus bill which Congress will vote on this week.

“It sounds to me like we’re in a position to make monumental changes in the delivery of water here in Jackson, which is sorely needed,” Hosemann said.

Hosemann also addressed funding for the Mississippi Department of Transportation emergency roads and bridges program. He said last year the legislature allocated $100 million towards the program, and this year he intends to allocate another $100 million.

“I think the total requests were about $300 million last year, so by doing this a second year we’re getting much closer to having our roads and bridges fully prepared to take on loads of our economics, of school buses as our children are on their way to school,” Hosemann said. “This was a goal that was basically unachievable four years ago, and now we’re on the cusp.”

Another priority for Hosemann is to make it easier for school districts that would like to move to a modified calendar to do so. He said the six school districts that currently use a modified calendar are seeing positive results, and there are other districts that would like to move to such a system but cannot afford the cost. Hosemann is proposing a grant program that would cover the additional costs of moving to a modified calendar.

“We don’t always need to do things the way they were always done. Now that has handicapped us,” Hosemann said. “We need to be able to be flexible enough to realize we’re not closing the schools to harvest anymore. We need to have our kids in school. They need to be prepared to compete not just with Arkansas and Alabama, but with China and the rest of the world.”

Hosemann also addressed taxes. The state passed its largest-ever tax cut last session after a compromise was reached between Hosemann and other Senate leaders and House leaders. House Speaker Philip Gunn had sought to eliminate the state income tax entirely, a move that Hosemann and many Senators opposed.

While that issue is likely to come up again during the session, Hosemann largely focused on a tax refund that he supports to return about $270 million in surplus funds. The lieutenant governor said he would prefer a system where all taxpayers are paid back each dollar they paid in taxes dollar-by-dollar until the surplus is gone. Estimates he has heard said the maximum refund would be about $500.

“That money was money in addition to the amount we had already budgeted, and the taxpayers sent in additional money, and I think we’ll send that money back,” Hosemann said.

That proposal too has received pushback from members of the House.

Hosemann also said there would likely be attempts to revive the state’s dormant initiative petition process, though that too comes with disagreement between the legislature’s two chambers.

Despite the potential roadblocks in the House and complications that come from an election year, Hosemann remains confident in his agenda.

“I think they’re all going to get passed, why wouldn’t they?” Hosemann said. “It’s all good legislation.”

Hosemann also addressed the recent decision by the Mississippi Ethics Commission to rule that the state legislature is not a public body, and the House Republican Caucus can meet behind closed doors. Under Hosemann, the Senate Republican Caucus has not held meetings behind closed doors.

“Everything we do here is open, so rather than say what I feel about it look at what we do,” Hosemann said.

Gov. Tates Reeves outlined a number of his priorities for the session in November through his budget recommendation. The office of Speaker Gunn, who announced earlier this year that this will be his last session as speaker, has not responded to requests for an interview on his legislative priorities.

View Original Story

Hattiesburg, Miss. (Hub City Spokes) – Extending postpartum Medicaid, creating a foster care bill of rights and building a new website to help moms and families find resources are all among the policy priorities backed by the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families, Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, told Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann tasked the group with reviewing the needs of Mississippi families and children from birth to age 3, following the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allowed the state’s near-total abortion ban to take effect.

The ban will result in an estimated 5,000 additional births each year, a 14% increase in the state with the country’s highest rates of infant mortality and preterm births; a foster care system in which children are often abused and neglected; and the most restrictive Medicaid policies for new moms in the country.

The Senate study group held hearings in September and October, focused on maternal health; adoption and foster care; childcare availability and early intervention for kids with special needs. They heard from state and national policy experts, obstetricians and pediatricians, and leaders of Mississippi state agencies.

“As we sit here today, we’re not ready,” committee member Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, told WLBT as the hearings concluded. “But I think that we can be there.”

Boyd told Mississippi Today that the committee is making recommendations in the following areas.

• Extending postpartum Medicaid from 60 days to 12 months postpartum. The Senate passed this measure last session, but House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, did not let it come to a vote in his chamber.
• Creating a website that will consolidate information for mothers about family planning, postpartum care, child care and more.
• Enacting a foster care bill of rights to address “the many concerns that foster parents have that we’ve heard from during this process.”
• Creating a study group to focus on foster care and the adoption system.
• Streamlining the foster care process by increasing judges’ discretion around regulatory requirements like the home study.
• Creating a study group to help overhaul the early intervention program, which aims to offer services for children with developmental delays as early as possible. The state Department of Health-run program currently serves about 1,100 children, but could be reaching as many as 10,000. Boyd said that investment would not only help kids succeed in school but also bring a significant return on investment for the state. “The more intervention services that you do, the dramatically less service and help those children need later in life.”
• Restructuring the tax credit for employers that provide childcare for their employees. Boyd pointed out that the labor force participation rate among single mothers is 75%, compared to 55% for the state as a whole.

With the exception of technical changes that state agencies could make on their own, policy changes will take place through legislation that will flow through committees like Medicaid and Public Health and Welfare and then go to the House.

With the exception of technical changes that state agencies could make on their own, policy changes will take place through legislation that will flow through committees like Medicaid and Public Health and Welfare and then go to the House.

Gunn has recently reaffirmed his opposition to extending postpartum Medicaid. His “Commission on Life,” the House’s analog to the Senate study group, has held no public meetings and Gunn’s staff will not say who the committee has met with. Several members told Mississippi Today they have heard from pastors and doctors, but declined to share their names.

They have not announced any concrete policy proposals, though Gunn has said he wants to expand the tax credit for the state’s roughly 40 crisis pregnancy centers – which do not offer health care services and vary significantly in offerings and scale – from $3.5 million to $10 million. Extending postpartum Medicaid would cost the state about $7 million and provide greater access to health care for roughly 20,000 women every year.

Boyd emphasized that the Senate group is not a one-session committee and expects members will continue to gather information and develop recommendations in the years to come.

Beyond the hearings, Boyd said, the group members have held about 50 meetings with researchers, advocacy groups, industry representatives and state agency staff.

The hearings were open to the public and live-streamed, and people were invited to share comments and feedback with the committee via email at WCFStudyGroup@senate.ms.gov.

View Original Story

Gulfport, Miss. (Mississippi Business Journal) – Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann on Monday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission because of the extended release of fresh water into the saltwater Mississippi Sound from the extended opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for South Mississippi seeks a temporary injunction to order the corps to operate the Bonnet Carré in conjunction with the Morganza Spillway and to mitigate damage to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The Morganza Spillway diverts water from the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya Basin and River in Louisiana.

“As state land Commissioner and trustee of the Public Trust Lands, it is my duty to protect Mississippi’s land, its water and its resources,” Hosemann said in Gulfport in a news release. The infiltration of fresh water into the Mississippi Sound as a result of solely opening the Bonnet Carré caused devastating effects across the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“This lawsuit does not address the monetary loss to the State and the Coast. This could be addressed in future litigation.”

The lawsuit further alleges the extended release was taken without the benefit of an up-to-date Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), giving no consideration of the environmental impact to the Mississippi Sound and Mississippi’s Public Trust Tidelands.

Thus Hosemann is seeking to compel the defendants to perform a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement as well as to utilize the Morganza Spillway to mitigate the freshwater inundation of the Mississippi Sound in the future.
In July, Hosemann asked the Corps and the Commision to: 1.) conduct an immediate study of the operating manuals and procedures for both the Morganza Floodway and the Bonnet Carré Spillway and 2.) include as part of the study, the ecological effects and economic impacts of freshwater intrusion into the Mississippi Sound as a result of the current operating procedures.

The freshwater intrusion into the Mississippi Sound from the Bonnet Carré Spillway negatively impacted oyster, shrimp, blue crab, and fish harvests and caused devastating losses to commercial fisherman, charter boat operators, and the tourism industry.

In August, Hosemann requested additional modeling of the opening of the Morganza Floodway in varying amounts and later in the month testified before the commission on the annual low-water inspection trip in Vicksburg where he reiterated all of these requests. Additionally, Hosemann, alongside the Department of Marine Resources, requested an Environmental Impact Study.

The Bonnet Carré Spillway has been opened five times since 2011 and was opened twice this year for a total of 123 days, while the Morganza Floodway has been opened twice – in 1973 and 2011.

View Original Story

Jackson, Miss. (AP) – Mississippi’s incoming lieutenant governor is setting an ambitious agenda for his first year in office.

Republican Delbert Hosemann will be sworn in Jan. 9, along with most of the other statewide elected officials. That’s two days after the legislative session begins and five days before the current lieutenant governor, Republican Tate Reeves, will be inaugurated as governor.

Hosemann is wrapping up his third term as secretary of state.

He told reporters last week that the morning after the Nov. 5 election, he started working on the transition to becoming lieutenant governor.

“We got instructions from the voters to go to work, and so we did,” Hosemann said.

The governor is the top elected official in the state, but the lieutenant governor has more power. Each of those officials is elected independently of the other; they do not run as a ticket.

The lieutenant governor presides over the 52-member Mississippi Senate, appoints senators to committees and names the committee leaders. The lieutenant governor decides which committees consider which bills, and that alone can determine whether any particular bill will live or die.

While the governor signs budget bills, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker shape the budget-writing process.

The lieutenant governor and the speaker serve on the 14-member Joint Legislative Budget Committee, alternating years as chairman of the group. The committee does the first round of vetting budget requests from state agencies, and it sets a broad outline of a spending plan for other members of the Legislature to consider. In the final days of budget writing at the end of each session, the lieutenant governor and the speaker also typically wield considerable influence over the final decisions about how money will be spent.

Hosemann said during the campaign this year that he wants the Legislature to give teachers another pay raise and to put more money into prekindergarten programs. In the interview last week, he said he intends to follow through with those things during the 2020 session, though he did not yet have suggested spending levels.

Hosemann also said legislators should consider pay raises for state workers, including people who make close to the $7.25 an hour minimum wage as custodians in mental health hospitals — about $15,000 a year. He also mentioned people who make $26,000 or $27,000 as guards in state prisons.

He said he wants to expand access to health care, although he said he’s not ready to jump into expanding Medicaid. Hosemann said he has been looking at steps taken by some expansion states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Louisiana.

“It’s a billion-dollar issue,” Hosemann said of Medicaid expansion. “A mistake would be catastrophic to Mississippi. We don’t have a chance for a mistake.”

He also said the Legislature will need to look at ways to improve community-based mental health services. After hearing weeks of testimony earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves found in September that Mississippi is violating the both the Americans with Disabilities Act and a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said “unjustified” mental hospital confinement is illegal.

Judge Reeves — no relation to the incoming governor — wrote that testimony showed dozens of examples of people who “were unnecessarily hospitalized or hospitalized too long because they were excluded from community-based services.”

Hosemann said he has met with all of the senators to discuss their specific interests in public policy. He said he intends to name committee members and chairmen on Jan. 10, the first Friday of the four-month session and of the four-year term.

Women comprise 51% of Mississippi’s population and a much smaller percentage of the state Senate. Asked if women will be assigned to committees handling significant responsibilities, Hosemann said, simply: “Yes.”

View Original Story

Jackson, Miss. (WJTV) – American Red Cross as well as many faith based organizations are asking for donations after this passed Monday’s storms.

We encourage you to contribute, but there is a science when it comes to donating after natural disasters.

You can give the most by giving less.

You might be quick to donate something practical like food or clothing or cleaning supplies but that might not be as useful as you’d think it’d be, and it can end up being a hassle.

Every situation in every household is different, meaning every household’s needs are different and you do not know exactly who will receive your donation.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann has a recommendation that will work for anyone in any situation: a gift card.

“That allows them to go to Walmart and get what they really need,” Hosemann said. “They may need clothes and you gave them a bucket… but a gift card, a $25, $50 gift card is a wonderful thing to give to someone. They can then use that for their basic necessities they may need to get them through this process.”

Hosemann said that another good donation to make is toiletries.

Hosemann said that he and all of his coworkers have been working tirelessly to aid those who have been affected by the tornadoes… but that the goverment relies on us to fill in any gaps, and encourages everybody to donate.

View Original Story

Guntown, Miss. (Daily Journal) – Lt. Gov.-elect Delbert Hosemann toured a storm-battered section of Northeast Mississippi on Wednesday to survey damaged homes and speak with residents in the area.

Hosemann told the Daily Journal after his visit to Guntown that he typically has traveled to storm-damaged areas and wants to speak with the homeowners in the area and listen to their concerns. He even sat down with one homeowner to just ask “How’s it going?”

“People just want to know you care about them,” Hosemann said.

Many residents sustained damage to their homes from a tornado that swept through the area on Monday, but Hosemann said most of the people he spoke with were overwhelmingly positive about the situation and were focused on rebuilding their homes.

“We’ve got a resiliency here that I just don’t see anywhere else really,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency existed in several areas throughout the state, including Guntown. Hosemann, the current secretary of state, also signed off on the declaration.

Hosemann told the Daily Journal he didn’t think Guntown itself sustained enough damage to satisfy the threshold needed for a federal disaster declaration. However, he said federal officials are conducting a final, collective survey from all of the storm-damaged areas in the state to see if a federal declaration can be issued for all of the areas.

“This will probably take one to two weeks to do,” Hosemann said.

The incoming lieutenant governor said the faith community deserves a lot of credit for assisting with the aftermath of the storm. He added that the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has done a good job of responding to the storm.

“We all need to be thankful it’s Christmas and that everyone who was affected is alive, and we’ll work on rebuilding Mississippi,” he said.

State Sen. Chad McMahan, a Republican from Guntown, joined Hosemann as he toured the area Tuesday.

Like Hosemann, McMahan praised the effort of the community to help those in need, including local churches, non-profits and business interests.

“The entire community has come together,” McMahan said.

View Original Story

Jackson, Miss. (Clarion Ledger) – Not a single dime of the state’s tax dollars was used to purchase the nearly 18,000 acres of iconic Mississippi Delta river bottoms now known as the Phil Bryant Wildlife Management Area.

As Lt. Governor-elect Delbert Hosemann said, “this is the way government, private, and non-profits ought to work.”

It worked like this: A federal grant administered through the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks (MDWFP) in combination with private funding from The Nature Conservancy in Mississippi (TNC) enabled the historic purchase.

And Mississippians can thank hunters from Mississippi and across the United States for the federal grant money that was used to help make this possible, as these funds are generated from a portion of all firearm and ammunition sales each year. These proceeds are directed into the Wildlife Restoration Trust, commonly referred to as the Pittman-Robertson Fund, which is annually apportioned to states for wildlife conservation efforts, hunter education programs as well as the operation of shooting ranges.

Since passage through Congress in 1937, the program has delivered over $7 billion for conservation efforts across the US. With the purchase of the Phil Bryant WMA, Mississippi will have now received over $146 million from that total allotment.

A lot of people may not be familiar with The Nature Conservancy, but this purchase in the Delta personifies who we are as an organization and the work we have been doing across Mississippi since the mid-70s. Our mission is to conserve land and water on which all life depends and we are honored to be a part of yet another effort in this great state that will conserve critical wildlife habitat unique to our part of the world.

This collaboration between the state, TNC, and the private sector means Mississippi has conserved one of the Delta’s last remaining blocks of “big woods”, while providing unprecedented recreational opportunities for years to come and it was at no cost to the taxpayers. It is easy to see why this will serve as one of the greatest conservation success stories in our state.

A purchase for hunters by hunters and to me that makes the Phil Bryant WMA pretty special.

Jackson, Miss. (WLBT) – The National Day of Giving is set for tomorrow and it’s a global generosity day set aside for people to give back to the community.

As people prepare to donate money to the charities of their choice, the Secretary of State’s office urges folks to beware of charity scams that could steal your money.

The Magnolia State is known to many as one of the most generous states in the country when it comes to helping those in need – especially around the holidays.

“Mississippi gives over a billion dollars a year to charity,” said Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann.

The Salvation Army and Red Cross are two nonprofits that welcome the donations.

“We have programs all the way up to seniors. We have feeding programs, arts education,” said Michelle Hartfield with the Salvation Army.

“We have several campaigns going on right now. We have a Holiday Giving Campaign on the way and tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. We’re collecting donations to support the mission of the American Red Cross, so it’s very important that we have several safeguards in place to protect the financial gifts of the general public,” said Tamica Smith, Director of Communications and Marketing Manager for the American Red Cross Mississippi.

While both organizations take extra steps to make sure their donations are going to the right place, Hosemann says there are a lot of phony charities that aim to scam people out of their Christmas cash so it’s important to research before you give.

“We encourage you to give local. We have our faith-based communities, we have more than 4,000 charities registered in the state that can take your money and spend it where we need to, here locally in Mississippi,” said Hosemann.

In fact, Hosemann says charities soliciting funds must be registered with the Secretary of State’s office.

“If you have any questions go to our website. We have a charity section and I will show you how much is used for the charitable purpose and how much is for management.”

Hosemann says you should always get receipts. Never give out personal or information such as your social and bank account numbers. Also, avoid pressure tactics.

“Most of time when they say we have to have this by 5 o’clock today or 10 o’clock tonight in order to fund charity with, they are really funding themselves, so don’t fall for that.”

For more information: www.sos.ms.gov or call 601-359-1599 (charities division).

View Original Story