Now Barbour Finds His Voice

As a Harrison County Sheriff’s Department patrol sergeant, Craig Necaise is one of the many law enforcement employees who dedicates his career to protecting the residents, and their homes, in South Mississippi. However, purchasing a home for his family of four has long been a dream he thought he could never achieve, until today. At a press conference held in Jackson this afternoon, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour announced that 267 police and fire personnel, teachers and other public-sectoremployees, including Necaise, have been qualified for $40,000 each in affordable housing assistance funds through the Gulf Coast Renaissance Corporation’s revolutionary REACH Mississippi program’s scholarship fund.

“The Gulf Coast Renaissance Corporation’s REACH Mississippi program is focused on opportunity. Employers are given the opportunity to invest in their best assets, their employees. Those employees, in turn, are offered the opportunity to become homeowners, often for the first time. And with this program, Mississippi has the opportunity to make housing affordable once again for the workforce,” Governor Barbour said.

REACH (Regional Employer Assisted Collaboration for Housing) Mississippi, which launched in August, is an employer-assisted housing program designed to address challenges to the area’s rebuilding process by providing gap financing directly to individuals or families that make up the workforce of South Mississippi. The program provides a three-to-one match to employer contributions for qualified workers earning less than 120 percent of the area median income (approximately $60,000 annually for a family of four living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast).

But Is It Good News?

Louisiana has displaced Mississippi as the unhealthiest U.S. state and other Southern states were close rivals due to high obesity and smoking rates in new rankings that deemed Vermont the healthiest.

The overall health of Americans remained static for a fourth year, according to an annual report issued on Wednesday assessing a series of measures also including binge drinking, health insurance coverage, air pollution, infectious disease rates, crime levels and immunization coverage.

Many Southern states were clustered near the bottom of the rankings. The region has some of the highest rates of obesity, which contributes to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer, as well as high rates of smoking, which causes cancer, lung disease, heart disease and other problems.

Mississippi led the nation in obesity at 33 percent of the population, while Colorado was lowest at 19 percent.

Now ask why none of this is being addressed by the legislature or the governor.  But they spend endless hours thanking people for service, age, championships, yada, yada.  Now is the time for Mississippians to demand that these overpaid dipsticks do the job they were sent to Jackson to do…represent the people’s will, not the special damn interests.  But what can you expect when you elect a lobbyist–if you think he has your best interests at heart…then I have land in Florida I would like to sell you.  Wake up!  Pay attention!

LA: New Housing Strategy

Fearing that federal recovery dollars for Hurricanes Gustav and Ike won’t fully cover residents’ crucial home repair needs, Louisiana officials are devising a new state strategy for housing relief.

Their fundamental concern: making sure that billions of dollars already spent on homes damaged by Katrina and Rita in 2005 won’t go to waste.

Nothing akin to the state’s massive Road Home recovery program for Katrina and Rita exists for Gustav and Ike. Victims of this month’s storms have their private insurance, but named storm deductibles of 2 percent to 5 percent are sure to leave gaps for those facing major repairs

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has stepped forward with more extensive home repair aid than it offered after Katrina and Rita, but it’s capped at $28,800 for each household and is designed only to make houses or apartments livable again. The FEMA process will, however, assist property owners in applying for low-interest Small Business Administration loans, which are designed to restore homes to pre-storm conditions.

That program, funded by about $10 billion channeled through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, was supposed to combine with private insurance settlements to recover the value of owner-occupied homes destroyed or badly damaged in the 2005 storms. It has paid more than 117,000 homeowners, but the unprecedented effort took more than two years to pay the bulk of the applicants and three years on, tens of thousands are still waiting for payment, in many cases having appealed an earlier decision.

AL: 4 Day Work Week In The Air

MS is considering and now AL, must be something in the air.

Baldwin County employees could be placed on four-day workweeks in as little as two months, according to County Commission Chairman Frank Burt Jr.

But Mobile Mayor Sam Jones said he is not interested in such a switch.

“That might work for a profit-driven business, but not a service-driven business,” Jones said. “People aren’t going to stop calling on Friday.”

Burt said he favors a plan in which some employees would work Monday through Thursday and others Tuesday through Friday. In both cases, he said, offices could stay open longer, as employees work from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a 30-minute lunch.

But he said that he believes it has enough support to gain County Commission approval. Burt said he hopes to bring a proposal before the commission in September and start the new schedules with the new fiscal year, Oct. 1.

MS: Hospitals May Close

Some hospitals and nursing homes could shut down, doctors could stop seeing patients and thousands of health- care workers could lose their jobs statewide, according to providers responding to $375 million in Medicaid cuts revealed late Friday.

he cuts also would affect home health care agencies, pharmacists, dentists and others, according to documents filed by Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican who oversees the program that serves nearly 600,000 Mississippians.

A threat? Most probably.

FL: City Funds Could Be Used

The City of Pensacola should pledge general revenue funds to back a $40-million bond issue for the Community Maritime Park.

The city originally had planned to use money from the Community Redevelopment Agency — a special district that uses property taxes paid by downtown residents to address slum and blight — to repay the proposed $40 million bond issue.

A Florida Supreme Court ruling in September, however, halted those plans when it ruled in an unrelated case that voter approval is required when property taxes from special districts are used to repay bond issues.

he new proposal would pledge city general revenue funds not generated by property taxes as collateral on the debt. The funds could include revenues from franchise fees, communications services taxes or public service taxes generated through utility fees.

The general fund has already taken a hit, because of statewide property tax reform approved by Florida voters on Jan. 29. The city is in the process of implementing a 30-month plan to cut $4.7 million from its general fund. Preliminary plans call for cutting 122 city employee positions through retirements and attrition, and streamlining departments and services.

In November voters could approve another round of property tax cuts that could reduce city revenues even further.

BUt my question is where will the funds come from to try and end the blight that is festering in the city?

MS: Barbour Upset With Legislature

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he’s puzzled why the House Democratic leadership is against a tax that amounts to less than one percent of a hospital’s gross revenue but brings six times that amount in federal funds back to the medical centers.Fighting continues over ways to fund a recurring $90 million Medicaid shortfall, caused by a federal government mandate that the state change the way it funds its match of federal Medicaid dollars. Barbour wants to raise the hospital tax, but Democrats say the cost will be passed to patients and they instead support a combination of a cigarette tax and smaller hospital bed tax – half of Barbour’s – to fund the shortfal

But Barbour said the House’s failure to pass his proposal threatens the program in the short term and that various House plans would eventually lead to taxpayers being hit with higher Medicaid bills

Prior to the change mandated by the federal government, Mississippi taxpayers were essentially footing more of the bill for matching federal dollars, Barbour said. Hospitals, for every dollar put up, were receiving $12 back from Medicaid. Barbour says that under his tax increase proposal, hospitals would still get $6 back for every $1 they spend.

To date, the price tag for the ongoing special legislative session to deal with Medicaid has easily eclipsed $500,000 and continues to grow. But Barbour said he doesn’t know what the holdup is, as the Mississippi Hospital Association has endorsed the hospital tax plan he supports, which includes lucrative reimbursements for the hospitals.

Senate Bill 2013, sponsored by Public Health and Welfare Chairman Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, and Sen. Terry Burton, R-Newton, would raise the tax on hospitals to just over one half of a percent of their gross revenues. It passed the Senate in May in a 41-7 bipartisan Senate vote, but so far has not been taken up by the Democratic House leadership.

LA: A New Hospital In N.O.

After a months-long review, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration gave its backing Wednesday to a 424-bed, $1.2 billion academic teaching hospital in downtown New Orleans designed to treat a majority of the region’s uninsured patients and serve as the hub of a revamped medical corridor.

The proposed size, which comprises 364 acute-care beds and 60 psychiatric beds, is smaller than the 484-bed configuration suggested last year in a state-commissioned business plan. But the administration’s support helps clear up months of uncertainty about a project that is expected to anchor the state’s post-Katrina public health care system and train the next generation of medical professionals.

While Jindal has consistently said he supports a new hospital for New Orleans, his administration has challenged the size and cost of the project as excessive and asked Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine to review the 2007 business plan commissioned by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration.

According to the review, the hospital would be built in a way that it could be expanded if market conditions warrant. But the review also predicted that the new hospital will not turn a profit, as originally envisioned, and instead will require indefinite taxpayer subsidies. Those subsidies will be considerably larger if the state doesn’t build a hospital that can attract private-pay patients.

Three years later and they are still talking about this—do you see anything wrong with that picture?

MS: House Bill And Housing Funds

Just two weeks after a critical joint House committee hearing, the House on Wednesday approved a bill to break a federal impasse on rebuilding public housing after a disaster.

The bill, which was done on a bipartisan basis and passed on a voice vote, removes a conflict between FEMA and the Housing and Urban Development Administration over funding. The Public Housing Disaster Relief Act, (H.R. 6276), would remove the HUD program to make way for the FEMA funding.

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Travis Childers, R-Miss., who was a floor manager of the bill, said it represented “a common sense approach” to remove the barrier that “has stalled federal dollars” from being used to rebuild the Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

House Financial Institutions Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said, “This is no special deal for Louisiana and Mississippi. This simply provides public housing’s fair share.”

FEMA Denies Asssistence

While Jackson residents may have received denial letters from FEMA in the weeks following the April 4 tornadoes and storms, they may still be able to get aid. Some residents were denied aid by FEMA because they were already insured.

“By law, we cannot duplicate what insurance already covers or pay for deductibles,” said Michael L. Parker, FEMA’s federal coordinating officer in a statement. “But in some cases, if insurance did not cover all your losses, we may be able to help. Residents who need help making ends meet can visit the FEMA/State Disaster Recovery Center at Willie Morris Library on Old Canton Road to discuss insurance claims and advice after getting their insurance settlement papers.

FEMA will cover hotel costs while homes are uninhabitable or inaccessible if insured victims’ policies do not cover temporary living. Other items such as septic tanks and wells, not usually covered by insurance companies, may be covered by FEMA.

MEMA director Mike Womack believes that they should try to talk with FEMA workers about help. “Even if you have insurance coverage, don’t wait for a settlement before registering with FEMA,” he said. “If you wait for your insurer to act, it may be too late to register for federal assistance. The filing deadline is July 27.”