Hall has nerve asking for secrecy
If there is a state agency in Mississippi that should be required to be more transparent, not less, it’s the Department of Corrections.
Yet, Pelicia Hall, the head of that agency, was asking a panel of lawmakers last week to relieve MDOC of some of the requirements of the state Public Records Act.
She claimed that reporters and others are pestering MDOC with more requests than it can handle within the law’s deadlines for turning over the requested records. She also questioned the motives of some of the requests, saying they appeared to be a “fishing expedition,” presumably for a story or an inmate lawsuit.
“There should be some limits on what you are transparent about,” Hall was quoted as saying to the Senate Corrections Committee.
The truth is the Public Records Act already provides limits — too many of them — over what government agencies in Mississipi have to disclose. They can keep under wraps most personnel records, criminal investigative reports, information related to economic development projects, just to name some of the most commonly shielded documents. A couple of years ago, lawmakers carved out a special exemption just for MDOC to withhold the identity of the suppliers that provide the state with the drugs used for executions.
Rather than too much disclosure, MDOC has suffered from too little.
It often communicates to the public only when compelled to. What information it does provide about inmates or about what transpires behind prison walls is scanty and sometimes misleading.
Last year, when 16 inmates died in one month while in state custody, Hall pretended there was nothing unusual about the death toll until a couple of those “pesky” record seekers called her out on it and showed that the death rate was about three times higher than average.
And does it even have to be mentioned that the lack of transparency in corrections allowed a predecessor of Hall’s, Chris Epps, to swindle an estimated $1.4 million in kickbacks and bribes in one of the worst corruption scandals in state history? Trusting Epps, as many lawmakers and several governors foolishly did, allowed him to hit up almost anyone who wanted to do business with MDOC or any of its offshoots until the feds came in and cleaned house.
Not only should lawmakers reject Hall’s request for relief from the state Public Records Act. They should tell her if she doesn’t like being held accountable by the public, she should consider other employment.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
Reeves ridiculous on Medicaid
Just when it looked as if Mississippi might be warming up — finally — to the unrefutable logic of expanding Medicaid to cover the working poor, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves has thrown ice water again on the idea.
Reeves said this week that he is opposed to covering more of the uninsured — even if that means forgoing an estimated billion dollars a year in federal dollars that would create thousands of jobs and shore up the state’s struggling hospitals.
It had been reported recently that Gov. Phil Bryant, who had been as mule-headed as Reeves when it came to accepting the sweet deal that Obamacare offers the states, was exploring ways to expand the federal-state health insurance program, possibly by seeking waivers that would reduce even further what would already be a very modest state match.
But Reeves, who has a habit of keeping senators from voting on anything that he doesn’t support or he perceives as contrary to his political interests, indicated he would not go along.
“I will remain opposed to any call for Obamacare expansion, no matter what other name or what other form you want to call it,” Reeves said at a press function.
When pressed for an explanation, The Associated Press reported, Reeves said three times, “I’m opposed to Obamacare expansion in Mississippi,” then added, “I don’t know how many ways I can explain this to y’all.”
The reason he is being hounded by the question — and why he will be pounded about it on the campaign trail for governor by his Democratic opponent, Jim Hood — is the opposition is incomprehensible.
Many rural hospitals in this state are suffering because they don’t have enough patients and too many they do have are uninsured and can’t pay for their treatment.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital is a perfect example of the financial plight that the Tate Reeves style of Obamacare paranoia has created.
That hospital has lost almost $37 million over the past three years. Although its finances appear to be improving, it’s still losing money. For the first three months of the budget year that began Oct. 1, it was more than a million dollars in the red.
Subho Basu, the hospital’s interim CEO, estimates that the hospital would be getting $7 million to $10 million more in revenue a year if Mississippi had expanded Medicaid. Assuming his estimates are close to right, the hospital’s combined losses from 2016 to 2018 would have been more than halved, and it would be back to profitability this year under Medicaid expansion.
The majority of states have done the math and figured out it’s insane to look this gift horse in the mouth. The number of initial holdouts has been steadily dropping. Only 14 remain. Yet, Mississippi, the poorest state of them all, the one with the sickest population, the one with the most stagnant economy, is one of them — and it’s all because of Tate Reeves and others like him who put blind allegiance to ideology over common sense.
If he and other Republicans in power don’t see the light soon, more community hospitals in this state are going to close, and others will be a shell of what they were.
Hopefully it won’t have to get to that point before people wake up and wonder whose interest do these obstructionists represent. Not this community, that’s for certain.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
