Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Miss.) – Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann spoke by Zoom to the Rotary Club of North Jackson and gave an update on the recent legislative session.
Abolished the state Fair Commission. “That had been a disaster. We couldn’t get the records right, the money right. We merged that into Andy Gipson (Agriculture Commissioner). It is already looking better down there.”
Increased loan program for poultry farmers. “We increased the amount of money that young, poultry farmers can get to start their poultry business. We have a loan program now of $250 million.”
Gave banks the ability to protect elderly from fraud. “Banks can protect the vulnerable from sending their money to Nigeria or whenever there’s an issue and the banks think an elderly person is being taken advantage of. Exploitation of elderly persons is very prevalent now as we live longer and have more money that we saved up. We are now routinely stopping these schemes.”
Removed ACT score teacher requirement to improve recruitment. “Teachers have to have a 21 on the ACT and a 3.0 grade point average. We changed that from ‘and’ to ‘or.’ We wanted to be able to recruit good teachers who test poorly on the front end but have outstanding academic achievement.”
Made it easier to get public school vouchers for special needs students. “We helped special needs kids get vouchers if their school doesn’t provide for their special needs, such as autism or whatever. They can go to another public school and take the money and get treatment where they can find it.”
Improved process for getting a driver’s license. “We tried to fix the driver’s license bureau. We took all the officers that were uniformed officers off and put them back out on the road and back out doing work. There is now a $10 penalty if we don’t get you out of there in two and a half hours. We discount your license by $10. If they don’t perform, then we’ll do something else.”
Improving mental health. “We funded mental health. Mississippi is getting sued over mental health, and it’s been a very difficult discussion. There’s been a conservator appointed. There’s a federal judge over here, and he is not favorably inclined to Mississippi. We put in a mental health coordinator, and we’re trying to push back to where people who need mental health can get it in their local communities versus having to be put in a building or a hospital somewhere.”
Tweaking deer season. “We allowed that if the season ends on Friday, you can extend it to Sunday. That passed unanimously.”
More accountability for job subsidies. “In the past, you’ve seen these companies come to Mississippi, asking for $10 million, $50 million or $100 million dollars and promising to create 2,000 new jobs. Then when you look back, those jobs never materialized. So we have put in an accountability function. The Mississippi Development Authority will have to tell us how many jobs actually got created and how many were promised. It’s a claw back provision where we go get our money back and put it back in the state treasury. They can’t promise to do 100 jobs, then do 40 and say, well, we tried.”
Improved workforce training program.
“One of the biggest things we did that got no press was reform the SWIB board (State Workforce Investment Board). It had 43 members and was just not effective. We limited it to a seven-man board with a permanent full-time director. Now we can make sure that if a program promises to train 20 welders, we get 20 welders and we get this without having this proliferation of community college programs all over. We have reformed this board into a workable, accountable, accessible and transparent agency which we’ve never had before.”
COVID made it a difficult budget year.
“We had a tough budget year. It collapsed on us in March and April and we were $240 million below budget. We ended up coming back a little bit and breaking even in June. So we had to cut about five percent off state agencies. I did restrict us to cutting 1.6 percent on education. We have a $5.2 billion dollar budget, so it was about a $300 million cut.”
Provided students with access to the Internet. “When we got the CARES Act money, $1.25 billion, I allocated $200 million dollars to education. We bought every student in Mississippi an iPad or a Chromebook — $134 million worth of them. Every student now will have the hardware to get access to the Internet. We put $75 million into co-op matches, so we’ve put $150 million into broadband. I think 50,000 homes now will have access to the Internet that never had it before, and we’re doing a number of hot spots like water towers and other places like that to reach out to our kids.”
Students need to get back into the classroom. “When I would talk to the students, almost 70 percent or more of them want to be back in class, only about 10 percent of the kids thought it was a good idea to have distance learning. I want you to know that distance learning is not the answer for education.”
Take COVID seriously. “I went through the virus and had a very difficult two weeks. I am very fearful of the long-term consequences of coronavirus. It is not the flu and you don’t get over it. You got heart problems, neurological problems, all other kind of problems that go on post recovery period. I think clearly each school district in Mississippi has the ability to make their own decision. Each one of them have to make their own decision. I don’t know that one size fits all.”