A large group of area citizens and politicians gathered Monday morning for breakfast and to hear Scott County lawmakers discuss this year’s legislative session, and the issues with which they are dealing. The event, sponsored by Community Bank, was held in the board room at Forest City Hall and featured District 78 Rep. Randy Rushing, Sen. Tyler McCaughn, and District 75 Rep. Tom Miles.
Rep. Rushing kicked off the event and immediately addressed the subject of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. “I’ll touch on Corrections quickly, I think that seems to be a hot topic in our communities,” Rushing said. “Especially north of us in the Walnut Grove area. The Corrections division is looking at possibly opening up that facility. It’s sitting there and we’re paying for it, and you’re paying for it, to the tune of a little over 93 million dollars that the state paid for that facility. We’re still paying on it and you’re still paying on it.”
Rushing said that he felt the state should be utilizing the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in some form or fashion. “It brings jobs to our area and it also takes the financial burden off of trying to keep up Parchman, which in my opinion is outdated. It is in terrible shape.”
The representative said he felt that there are some sections of the state prison that are so old and in such state of disrepair that it would not be feasible to spend money on them. “We should be looking at using facilities that are newer and more modern, and try and spend your dollars wisely when it comes to the Corrections division.”
Rushing also touched on overcrowding in the prisons. “We need to make sure we are not holding people who should be out in society making a living, and who are hopefully reformed and have learned their lesson. We need them out of the prison system so we can concentrate on the ones who need to be there.”
Forest Mayor Nancy Chambers brought up the subject of trustee labor and the fact that state no longer reimburses counties for housing state inmates. “All you need to do is to ride around and you can see the value of the trustee program,” Chambers said. “I hope y’all are open minded to (bringing the program back.)”
“Oh, I think there is no doubt that we are,” Rushing said. “It’s just a matter of if a particular sheriff’s department wants to house inmates and working out a program to do it. With this Walnut Grove Facility I’ve been advocating that if we get the type of inmates up there that are trustworthy, not dangerous, I can envision us having enough people up there that every county, Leake, Neshoba, Scott, can get an old school bus and send it up there every morning to load up and go back to their prospective counties.”
“I would rather see them in the Scott County Detention Center,” Chambers said.
Scott County Supervisor Jackie Bradford agreed with Chambers. “We house some here now,” Bradford said, “but we absorb the cost. Do you know anything about us getting reimbursed for housing those trustees here,” he asked. Rushing answered, “we are working on that too.”
Before the state discontinued reimbushment they were paying the counties $20 per day. In comparison the state is now paying private contractors $60 per day, Rushing said.
Senator McCaughn agreed that there are problems in the Dept. of Corrections. “Corrections is in a mess,” the senator said.
In addressing education McCaughn said, “for the first time that I know of you had 52 co-sponsors in the Senate on an education bill providing — it doesn’t sound like much — but it is a $1,000 raise to our teachers. Combined with the $1,500 (last year) that is $2,500 in two years. You had 52 co-sponsors and it was a unanimous vote. That is amazing. That is the bipartisanship I hope we continue to see in the Senate.”
Rep. Miles also addressed the problems in the Department of Corrections. “When we were campaigning in the summer and fall, we did not realize this issue was there,” Miles said. “Their budgets have been cut for years and years we’ve heard the concerns from the committee heads, but we’ve got so many problems and not enough money to go around.”
Miles said that there are currently around 500 people up for parole but that they can not be released because they do not have an address. “They can’t leave jail because they have no where to go, and they have no where to check in,” he said. “We are looking at this situation and maybe having some step down facilities. We are paying all that money for them to just sit there when they could actually be in a transitional home.”
Concerning the poor conditions at Parchman, Miles has also turned his focus to the Walnut Grove Facility as a possible solution. He said there are 1,000 to 1,500 beds that could be used at Walnut Grove to house prisoners.
As for housing trustees on the county level and using them on work details picking up litter and the like, Miles said if the state is going to spend $20 a day housing prisoners in the county jails compared to $50 per day in Parchman it only makes sense to house them in the counties, and give the trustee program back to the board of supervisors.
“We can put these guys back to work, they can pick up paper on the side of the road. They can work at Roosevelt State Park and help us keep it clean. They can do things here in Forest and work at the Courthouse and the list goes on, and on, and on.”
Miles added, “that’s a common sense solution, but commons sense is not so common in that building (the House.)”
Eduction and state testing has always been issue that Rep. Miles has worked to improve.
“The Mississippi Adequate Education Program helps rural counties like Scott County,” Miles said. “We don’t have the roof tops that Rankin County has. That gives them more money to go back to the county budgets, to go back to the city budgets, go back to address public schools (in the form of property taxes) so MAEP was addressed to help equalize that in rural areas. When we don’t fund MAEP, our counties suffer. Just like this year our board of supervisors had to raise taxes, and they had to raise them roughly around $200,000 give or take a dollar. We were underfunded in Scott County as a whole (MAEP funds) by about $2 million.”
Miles reiterated his stance that there is too much testing in public schools. “The one thing in Mississippi that is not going up is our ACT scores,” Miles said. “We average around 18-18.1 on the ACT Test. The national average is 20-21.”
Miles said the state needs to cut out the unnecessary testing of students and concentrate on improving ACT scores. “We need to give our teachers and our schools the flexibility to go to the ACT and free up these classrooms so they are just not teaching to the test,” he concluded.
