The Committees for Homeland Security and Oversight & Reform will "investigate" whether the state of Mississippi denied federal funds to Jackson so the city could maintain its water system.
Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson and Congresswoman Carol Maloney notified Governor Tate Reeves of the investigation in an October 17 letter (posted below). The Congressman from Bolton blamed "state roadblocks" for Jackson's water problems.
The notice claims ARPA "made billions of dollars available to Mississippi to address" infrastructure problems such as water issues. However, the legislature handcuffed the funding:
criteria used by the Mississippi Municipality and County Water Infrastructure Act to allocate funding—such as median household income, possible population decline, and unemployment rate—may limit the funding Jackson receives compared to other locales, despite Jackson’s much greater need.¹⁹ We are also troubled by the Mississippi legislature’s decision to allocate federal funding from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program on a matching basis with municipalities, which risks further perpetuating underinvestment in Jackson. The cost of necessary maintenance to Jackson’s water distribution systems is forecasted to be as high as $1 billion.²¹ Under the matching formula Mississippi adopted for American Rescue Plan Act funds, Jackson would directly receive, at most, $84 million for water projects —assuming the city is able to use its entire allocation for these projects.
Congresswoman Maloney accused the state of making "repeated attempts to limit funding to Jackson to address its unsafe water systems." The good Congresswoman accused Governor Reeves of blocking funds to fix Jackson's water system for "over a decade."
The Chairman and Chairwoman of the two committees asked Governor Reeves to provide:
* Itemized list of all spending of ARPA funds. The list should include include information on demographics, race, and size of each entity receiving ARPA funds.
* A detailed description of the “additional layer of review for applications from the City of Jackson” and the basis for it, including a description of the localities and communities affected by additional review and their racial demographics and population sizes.
* An update on the Drinking Water Systems Improvements Revolving Loan Fund Program. The letter complains the state only forgives a maximum of $500,000 such loans.
* How will the state provide federal funds to Jackson so it can complay with the 2021 EPA consent decree on drinking water?
Congressman Thompson is the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security while Congresswoman Maloney is the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Kingfish note: The letter is mainly for show. The Republicans are expected to win control of the House of Representatives in the November elections. It's a safe bet the investigation will die a drowning death once the the change of power takes place.
26 comments:
Circling the wagons to protect our little man mayor. The mayor has been successful in using the race card in the press, but everyone enough lives here knows that the governor only spoke the truth. The governor is the boy who shouted out the emperor is wearing no clothes.
It’s more of a fact-finding mission than an investigation. This should be allowed to be completed so that details can come out and the state can be absolved. If it’s shut down the city will claim they were right about the investigation to on and will claim investigation was shut down to hide facts.
And nobody wants to talk about the lack of accountability by the COJ administration and water department for their total incompetence in not doing the job that every other municipality does when it comes to providing water to its citizens. They just want those federal & state dollars rolling in with absolutely no oversight. What an absolute cluster fuck the COJ is!!!
fact-finding? I'm very sure you want the facts to come out. Very sure.
EPA does not even handle water grants! What a joke.
Blogger Kingfish said...
fact-finding? I'm very sure you want the facts to come out. Very sure.
I do. Who, besides the mayor and his troops, doesn't? However, if it's like the other witch-hunt that Bennie is orchestrating, we all know where it will head.
I look forward to such an investigation. It seems to me Tate has been treating public money like it's his own personal property for a long time.
At the same time, I don't believe any reasonably-fair and thorough investigation can in any way absolve this Black Nationalist mayor of his own incompetence. At most, it could be a distraction for Lumumba to try to hide behind.
I think Tate miscalculated when he tried to beat the big mouth at his own game, and I hope they both get publicly called out. In my opinion, both men's careers should end when their current terms expire. It's time for some grown ups to take over.
More deflection - it's what the libs do when they are caught dirty.
Benny seems to look for witch hunts he can get involved in. Has he ever done anything for the people of Ms. or is he just to busy worrying about racism?
* Itemized list of all spending of ARPA funds. The list should include include information on demographics, race, and size of each entity receiving ARPA funds.
* A detailed description of the “additional layer of review for applications from the City of Jackson” and the basis for it, including a description of the localities and communities affected by additional review and their racial demographics and population sizes.
This will be very interesting to see just how much the state government is bending over the minority communities.
If they just actually collected payments, there would be funds available to make repairs. Since they can't even accomplish that, they have no argument!!
Thompson must love participating in clown shows.
I'm no Tate apologist, but how is Tate responsible when the legislature appropriates the monies?
Why wouldn't it die now? Ballotpedia has Mississippi House of Representataives listed as controlled by Republicans 76-42-3 (3 being independents) meaning they're +15. Is that forecasted to go higher?
Seems two could play this game. The State should request detailed listing of COJ spend and how it was distributed to minority communities over white communities.
@1:41. Gotta be one to be in the show.
@11:28 Exactly. Let them gather facts to their hearts’ content. The deeper they dig, the tighter the vise grip on Lumumba and certain previous elected and appointed city officials.
The rules for the ARPA (slfrf) funds are extremely broad and do not require the state to do any of the things the letter implies they should have done. In fact the state is under no obligation to make even a penny available to local governments.
In addition, it is a grant management best practice to impose additional requirements on entities at a high risk of waste, fraud, and abuse (/incompetence) of TAXPAYER DOLLARS.
They are the ones who drafted and passed the law. If they wanted more say in how the money is spent, they had the opportunity to do so. This all a bunch of bullshit to appease their base. They know this.
Seems like a reasonable request that the state should be able to provide answers to very quickly. Tater will probably try to stall like kingfish suggested, but that would only make him look guilty so we will see. It’s obvious the city has mismanaged their water system for years, but I’m interested in finding out what this special requirement is they placed on Jackson. That doesn’t sound above board.
If anyone needs investigating it’s uncle Bennie! But who has the cajones?
Once again, this is a shakedown scam, to flip Mississippi blue in retaliation for the Dobbs ruling. We were left completely the fuck alone until then. This is why Herr Wicker vas invited to zee Davos
"Fish Fry" Bennie only wishes to keep those MSNBC/CNN interviews lined up.
No different from Fauci.
Since when has it become the states fault for Jackson not doing the things necessary to run. If this goes they wait till Vicksburg, Greenville, Hattiesburg, Wiggins etc. wants the state to fund any and all their projects. Collect your bills JACKSON and cut them off if they don’t pay.
McComb needs to sue! SRF funds and charlatans convinced them they needed a high dollar wastewater treatment plant. Now the minimum water/sewer bill is nearly $90 per month! Sounds like racism to me!
Jack Nicholson said”You can’t handle the truth!” So let us see how media spins this after investigation!
The Democrats have been doing crooked things so long they no longer hide it. They are the biggest racists there are, with Bennie leading the charge. He wants the taxpayers of Mississippi and now the United States to pay for the democratic leadership in Jackson failure to run the City of Jackson properly. It has been reported for years by Jackson Jambalaya and several other news organizations but because Jackson is mostly black nobody wants to address it for fear of being called racist. And so now we have it. Benny Thompson is using his position to call out the State leadership as racist knowing everyone runs the other way to avoid the subject. And what the hell does Homeland Security have to do with this? A missuse of his office.
Until politicians are willing to call it like it is and stand up to this crap nothing will improve for the folks in the City of Jackson.
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