[Congress sent $600 million to Jackson to help fix its water
system. Some are warning that new legislation could funnel the money
out of the city.]
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LAWMAKERS ATTEMPTING TAKEOVER OF FUNDS FOR JACKSON’S WATER SYSTEM,
FEDERAL MANAGER WARNS  
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Nick Judin, Mississippi Free Press
February 3, 2023
ProPublica, Mississippi Free Press
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_ Congress sent $600 million to Jackson to help fix its water system.
Some are warning that new legislation could funnel the money out of
the city. _

Jim Craig (MS State Department of Health) left, leads Jackson Mayor
Chokwe A. Lumumba, right, Deanne Criswell, administrator (FEMA),
center, and Gov. Tate Reeves, rear, at a water treatment facility in
Ridgeland, Mississippi, Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo/Pool

 

_ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign
up for The Big Story newsletter
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to receive stories like this one in your inbox_.

JACKSON, Miss. — The freeze of early 2021 wasn’t the origin of
Jackson, Mississippi’s water system collapse
[[link removed]].
But the winter storm introduced the country to Jackson’s aging and
improperly maintained pipes and water plants, which failed and left
residents without clean water for over a month.

The crisis surged back in the summer of 2022, leaving residents
without clean water for two months and drawing comparisons to Flint,
Michigan’s lead-poisoning scandal, another banner example of
America’s ruinous infrastructure systems. Here, as in Flint, the
federal government stepped in: In November, the Department of Justice
appointed a federal manager
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to take control of the beleaguered utility, and less than a month
later, Congress approved $600 million
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exclusively for the city’s water system.

But the rescue effort is already running up against the realities of
local politics, reflecting historic tensions between Jackson and the
rest of the state. For decades, state and city leaders have clashed
over who should control local spending, services and infrastructure.
Now, both the federal manager and the city’s mayor are warning that
state politicians are attempting to take over Jackson’s water
system, along with hundreds of millions in federal funds meant for
repairing it.

At the heart of the feud is Senate Bill 2889
[[link removed]],
introduced in mid-January by a lawmaker who says his only goal is to
ensure the Mississippi capital’s water system is restored.

The legislation would create a new regional water-authority board to
oversee the system’s water, sewer and drainage systems. The governor
and lieutenant governor would appoint a majority of the board. Over
the years, state leaders including the current governor, Tate Reeves,
have expressed skepticism about whether Jackson is capable of managing
its own affairs. Federal agencies, including the Justice Department
and the Environmental Protection Agency, have also questioned the
city’s management
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of its water and wastewater systems.

The latest move in the Legislature worries the manager, Ted Henifin
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who says a regional authority could allow improvements and debt relief
to flow out of Jackson and into suburban utilities that join the
entity. “I believe the $600+ million in federal funding has created
a monster in the Mississippi Legislature,” Henifin told the
Mississippi Free Press and ProPublica in a written statement last
week. A federal judge appointed Henifin to the position of interim
third-party manager in late November.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba built on Henifin’s critique Monday.
“It is a colonial power taking over our city. It is plantation
politics. I have not been shy in the ways that I have referenced
this,” he said.

The mayor highlighted a litany of other proposed legislation
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that together would give Mississippi authority over segments of
Jackson’s police and court systems. He called the legislative
proposals a “unified attack” against the city’s autonomy.

“It reminds me of apartheid,” he said. “They dictate our
leadership, put a military force over us and we’re just supposed to
pay taxes to the king.”

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch, and Lt.
Gov. Delbert Hosemann, whose office helped design the measure,
strongly denied that attempts to divert federal funds were behind the
legislation. After the news organizations asked Parker about some
critics’ concerns, he and Hosemann agreed that the state should
recoup none of the federal funds, and Parker pledged to introduce an
amendment that would explicitly prohibit the use of the funds outside
Jackson’s city limits.

Henifin was unmoved, saying he was concerned that amendments could be
overwritten later, and that a regional utility was the wrong solution
for Jackson in any case.

“We Need an Arbitrator”

If the Senate bill becomes law, the Mississippi Capitol Region Utility
Act [[link removed]]
would effectively give the state authority over Jackson’s water
system once the federal manager’s authority lapses.

That’s because it would grant the governor power to appoint three of
the nine members, and the lieutenant governor two, giving statewide
leaders, who are white, majority control over water, wastewater and
stormwater utilities in Jackson, whose population is 82% Black. The
mayor would get four appointments, including one that he would have to
select in “consultation” with the mayor of nearby Byram, majority
Black, and another chosen with the mayor of Ridgeland, a
demographically mixed suburb. The board would then elect a president
to formally lead the new regional utility.

In an interview, Henifin said he believes Jackson’s system requires
judicial and federal oversight to prevent the mismanagement of
critical infrastructure funds, which he estimates would take years to
properly spend.

“I think at the end of the day we need an arbitrator, and I think
that’s a federal judge in this case.” He said he believes this
oversight should be extended to protect the federal dollars,
estimating that five years of some form of oversight should be
sufficient to lock in the necessary contracts and investments.

He later said that legislative interference might threaten efforts to
procure a contract to address the water system’s crucial staffing
shortages because the prospect of a change in the water utility’s
leadership while a long-term contract is still being executed could
scare off large corporations.

Although Parker and Hosemann were complimentary of Henifin in
interviews with the Mississippi Free Press, Henifin says neither of
the parties involved has ever consulted him. Indeed, he said that
Hosemann’s office rebuffed his attempt to set up a meeting. Hosemann
acknowledged that he had not spoken with Henifin yet but said he
intended to “shortly.”

“I Wanted to Be Very Sympathetic”

Parker said that although he lives 200 miles from Jackson, he did
experience the city’s water crisis firsthand.

“I have a daughter that I live with during the legislative
session,” he said. “I’ve spent numerous times walking down to
the swimming pool and dipping water into a cooler, taking it back up
to the toilet to flush. We live in an apartment complex that’s had
to put portable facilities on the ground floor to allow people to go
to the bathroom.”

“I wanted to be very sympathetic and compassionate to the feelings
of the mayor and other people who have spent a long time trying to
seek answers to this problem,” Parker said. “So in setting up a
board that would be overseeing the water and sewer system, my idea was
to give the mayor four appointments on a nine-member board.”

He said he believed the governor and lieutenant governor should
appoint a majority of the board’s members because Mississippi’s
failure to “provide the basic needs and services that our people
deserve is reflected 100% back on the governor and the people in this
building.”

Parker said he initially believed that residents in Ridgeland drew
water from Jackson’s treatment plant. Though the facility itself is
located in Ridgeland, reporters told Parker that Ridgeland does not
currently receive water from Jackson’s water system; they also told
him that parts of Ridgeland may use Jackson’s greater sewage system.
He then suggested the bill may have included that city’s mayor in
light of that fact.

He expressed surprise over Henifin’s comments and strongly denied
any intent to divert money away from Jackson.

“There is no intent on my part to stack a board in any way, shape or
form that would give preferential treatment to the fringe areas of the
water authority,” he said. “My hope would be that if the majority
of the water authority is within the city of Jackson, I would hope
that the governor, lieutenant governor and mayor would put people on
the board from those geographic areas.”

Parker said he intends to speak with Henifin as his bill makes its way
through the Senate.

“Crafting something like this is an extreme challenge.”

The bill gives the surrounding municipalities a path to join the new
capital water authority, transferring their assets and debts to it, a
common feature of regional utilities.

The news organizations asked Parker if any part of SB 2889 prevented
that regionalization from allowing federal funds to be dispersed to
utilities outside Jackson. Parker said he would look into that
question. A day later, Hosemann said he had agreed with Parker that
they should address any gaps that might allow money to be spent
outside of the authority itself.

“It Is Plantation Politics”

Lumumba said the feud over spending the federal funds highlights the
friction between the state’s majority-white leaders and the
majority-Black capital city.

“It is plantation politics,” Lumumba said. “It’s consistent
with this paternalistic relationship that the state of Mississippi
believes that it maintains with the city of Jackson.”

Lumumba compared it to the 1% Sales Tax Commission, a system the
Legislature designed to assert control over spending derived from a
special sales tax Jackson maintains to fund infrastructure projects.

The mayor identified other bills as part of what he considers an
assault on the city’s right to self-determination, including bills
to expand the Capitol Police’s territory
[[link removed]].
Another bill would create an independent court system of unelected
judges and prosecutors
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for that same area. Lawmakers said the legislation was needed to
respond to a rise in crime rates.

“It’s all a unified attack,” he said.

In a response to additional inquiries, Hosemann’s Deputy Chief of
Staff Leah Rupp Smith said they defer to Parker on the legislation but
“share a desire with all parties to find a long-term solution,”
and she said that a regional utility authority “has been viable in
other parts of our state.” They said they planned to meet with
Henifin the week after next.

Parker said his conversations with the mayor have been “productive
and congenial.” He added that they “share an interest in ensuring
all people served by the systems have access to safe and reliable
water and wastewater services at a fair and reasonable cost.”

In recent years, Lumumba has clashed repeatedly with Hosemann over
Jackson’s autonomy. “The last time I met with him, he said that I
needed to look at a possible relationship with the state of
Mississippi, because ‘what did I think, that Biden was gonna write
me a check?’”

“I recently told him I do, and he did,” the mayor said of Biden.

* water
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* public utility regulation
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* Department of Justice
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* Mississippi
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* Jackson Mississippi
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* Racism
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* Politics
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