Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
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Sept. 28
The Vicksburg Post on a state watchdog agency report about the Mississippi Department of Education:
What exactly is going on with the Mississippi Department of Education?
The Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, a state government watchdog agency, issued a report this week indicating MDE has issued contracts without taking bids and that contractors were paid more than the bid requirements from 2014-2016.
The state auditor’s office is reviewing the PEER report and agreed Thursday an investigation into the matter is needed.
According to the Associated Press, the MDE issued five contracts to Research in Action, a company associated with former department employee J.P. Beaudoin, in the 2015 budget year. Collectively they were worth more than $200,000. All the contracts involved school assessment and accountability, but State Superintendent Carey Wright said they were for different things and that some expenses couldn’t be foreseen when the first contract was issued. The state’s accounting computer system should have flagged the contracts for review, but PEER wrote that it didn’t because of a system flaw since corrected.
Research in Action was hired earlier this year, after Beaudoin left, to do $48,000 more worth of work on annual reports.
John Q. Porter’s company, Blue Sky, was paid $342,000 in 2014 and 2015. That included $243,000 in 2015, well above the $100,000 level. Porter was then hired as the department’s chief information officer. Wright wrote that Porter, with whom she worked in Maryland, never recommended himself for the position.
The department also hired Elton Stokes and a Data One IT, a company run by Stokes’ wife, for $263,000 of data management work. Stokes also worked in the same Maryland school system as Wright. PEER judged that the Blue Sky and the Stokes contracts should have been combined and overseen by the state’s Department of Information Technology Services, which is meant to centralize computing purchases for maximum efficiency.
Finally, the department wrote it has no contract for $215,000 it spent with the Kyles Co. in 2015 to provide hardware, services and training to schools through a federal grant program.
The department spent more than $1 million with the contractors.
Wright responded that the MDE chose contractors from a pool of vendors, and that it didn’t purposefully set contract amounts just below thresholds.
“While it may appear to a layperson that the contracts in question are similar in the scope of services, it is the position of the MDE that these contracts are distinctively different in scope,” Wright wrote in response to the PEER report.
It also appears to a layperson that the bid process was ignored and contracts were doled out to “good ol’ boy” contractors.
Public education in Mississippi has numerous serious issues, justified or not, to overcome and the stink of corruption does not need to be one of them.
Online: https://www.vicksburgpost.com/
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Oct. 1
The Sun Herald of Biloxi on a lawsuit between a school district and city over tax increases:
One Coast is a great slogan. Easy to remember. Fits on a bumper sticker. Or a plaque.
In the real world, though, we are not there yet. Granted, the idea that the entire Coast, a place of cities small and large, communities urban and rural, can speak with one voice is a lofty goal. Getting there will not be easy.
Our officials, who have to lead us there, have to try harder if we’re to get there at all.
Once again, though, our leaders have chosen to turn to the courts, pitting government against government in the rather expensive legal arena.
In this latest installment, the Pascagoula-Gautier School District passed a budget that called for a tax increase. The Pascagoula City Council, which has final say over the increase, then voted it down. Gautier city officials complained after they passed a tax increase of their own that they knew nothing of the school district’s plans.
Now, the school district sued to require Pascagoula to allow the tax increase.
This probably won’t be the last time a school district asks for a tax increase either.
The state Legislature for years has failed to fund education at the level prescribed by its own laws. Pascagoula-Gautier Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich said last year that the district has been shorted about $25 million over those underfunded years.
And, as state funding slows, local governments will have to choose between ferreting a lot of waste, cutting services and raising taxes.
We believe all these players can agree that education is important. We believe they can agree that an educated workforce is crucial to attracting the business and industry that will boost the local economy and create jobs. And, they’ve seen the numbers, so they should be able to agree education is expensive.
We see no reason for them to spend money on legal fees to settle this dispute.
They should be able to sit down together and settle their differences and serve the people they were elected to serve. Too many times, though, elected officials along the Coast have turned to courts to help decide who’ll pick up our trash, or who’ll promote tourism in Hancock County.
One Coast doesn’t mean all officials need to be in lockstep on every issue. But we expect them to work out their differences without costing taxpayers additional money.
Seems every time governments turn to the courts, there are conflicts of interest between key players that require additional attorneys to be hired and an additional bill for the taxpayers.
We elected these officials to solve problems, not take one another to court. That system already is flooded with legal disputes and criminals, it doesn’t need the additional load of refereeing disputes between elected officials.
Online: https://www.sunherald.com/
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Sept. 24
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal of Tupelo on Mississippi’s education entities requesting a funding increase of $436.7 million from the state legislature:
Mississippi’s education entities and legislative leaders are at somewhat of a crossroads.
Officials with all three education entities - the state Board of Education on behalf of local K-12 school districts, the community colleges and public universities - appeared before legislative leaders last week to make budget requests for the upcoming fiscal year.
As is common practice, the 14-member Legislative Budget Committee organizes hearings during which officials with a variety of state agencies appear to make their case for their respective budgets.
In this case, Mississippi’s education entities will be requesting a funding increase of $436.7 million from the Mississippi Legislature when it convenes the 2018 session in January, as reported by the Daily Journal’s Bobby Harrison.
The biggest single requested increase for an education entity is $245.4 million to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which is the mechanism used to provide state funds to local school districts.
The total requested increase by the state Board of Education is $275.2 million or an increase of 10.8 percent. The remainder of the request, minus that for MAEP, includes funds to hire more literacy coaches to work in the early grades and an additional $6 million for the state’s pre-kindergarten program.
The Institutions of Higher Learning is requesting an increase of $83.4 million or an increase of 11.7 percent for the eight public universities. The universities are hoping to reverse a trend where in 2000 they received 56 percent of their total revenue from the state, but now receive only 28 percent from the state.
The community colleges are requesting an increase of $78.1 million or 33.7 percent. The increase includes $25 million for salaries to place the community college faculty salaries at a mid-point between the teachers in the public school and the university faculties.
Legislative leaders were quick to note that Mississippi is unlikely to have the kind of funding to grant these requests. The requested increase for all state agencies will be about $800 million - an increase of nearly 13 percent in a total state support budget of about $6 billion.
Those requests also come on the heels of state Economist Darrin Webb telling legislative leaders that Mississippi’s economy continues to lag that of the nation and will do so for the foreseeable future.
So what’s the solution? Some significant state agencies, including education entities, feel they need additional funding to do more for Mississippi, but state leaders say those funds aren’t available and might not be for a while.
Clearly something has to give. We’re not saying every funding request from an agency should be granted blindly. Officials with these agencies should be aware of the fiscal situation and heed that with each and every taxpayer dollar they seek to spend.
But at some point, our agencies, particularly our educational institutions, are likely going to need more to successfully prepare our students to compete in the global economy.
And as the common saying in the business world goes, you can’t cut your way to growth.
State leaders should realize that now and make a plan that allows for the continued responsible spending of taxpayer dollars while also putting forward investments in key areas such as education that can provide a significant return on investment for Mississippi down the road.
Online: https://www.djournal.com/
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