Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann used a speech to the Stennis Press Forum on Monday to declare the state in its strongest fiscal and educational position in memory, while urging lawmakers to build on recent gains with new spending on teachers, infrastructure, cybersecurity and rural services. Below is a summary of the talk produced by Perplexity AI followed by the entire transcript of Hosemann's talk.
Overview of themes
Speaking at Hal & Mal’s in downtown Jackson, Hosemann said Mississippi has fully funded public education three years in a row, cut more than $1 billion in various taxes, poured billions into roads and bridges and paid down about 35% of state debt during his tenure. He framed the coming 2026 legislative session as a chance to extend that “positive Mississippi” trajectory rather than launch major course corrections.
Education and absenteeism
Hosemann said the Senate will again push to fully fund the K‑12 formula and support another teacher pay raise, this time explicitly including community college instructors and university faculty. He called current pay “upside down” because graduates in high‑demand fields can earn more in their first job than the instructors who trained them.
He endorsed ending local districts’ little‑used power to block students from transferring to other public schools, calling the restriction “arcane.” He also urged extending the state’s successful third‑grade reading gate concept up through eighth grade, noting Mississippi ranks near the top nationally in early reading but falls to the “high forties” by eighth grade.
Hosemann warned that chronic absenteeism is now “more bothersome” to him than almost any other education issue, saying the share of students missing at least 10% of the school year has climbed from about 24% to 27%. He wants higher pay and clearer career paths for truancy officers, whom he described as part counselor and part social worker, and said his goal is a school resource officer in every school to help keep students engaged.
He also floated regional “special‑purpose schools” to serve students with dyslexia, autism and other needs in districts that lack specialists, saying the state is failing its federal obligation to educate children to their full capacity.
Government structure, licensing and new departments
Hosemann said Mississippi has roughly 200 boards and commissions, some of which rarely meet or duplicate other agencies’ work, and called for a statewide “reorganization” of the state’s org chart. He said his priority is making it quicker and easier for citizens to get answers from state government, promising proposals that consolidate back‑office functions and modernize technology while leaving licensing and discipline decisions with professional boards.
He signaled support for separating tourism into a stand‑alone department, calling it the state’s fourth‑largest income producer and “the face of the community” that should coordinate more closely with local Main Street groups. He also proposed creating a state Department of Cybersecurity, saying Mississippi now has “virtually nothing” in that area even as hackers target schools, hospitals and vulnerable residents.
Hosemann said such an agency should focus on prevention, rapid coordination with federal law enforcement to freeze stolen funds, and developing tools to prosecute cybercrime—even when perpetrators operate overseas. He warned that advances in artificial intelligence will make scams more convincing, citing voice‑spoofing as an emerging threat.
PERS, agriculture and workforce
Turning to finances, Hosemann compared the national Social Security debate to Mississippi’s Public Employees’ Retirement System and praised lawmakers for adopting higher contributions and a hybrid 401(k)‑style option for new workers. He said the PERS board has asked for additional infusions to reach at least 80% funded status, which actuaries treat as “fully funded,” and predicted the Senate and House will be receptive.
Hosemann described agriculture as one of the few “bad times” sectors, saying row‑crop farmers have endured two to three years of “massive losses,” including selling soybeans for about $10 a bushel when they cost roughly $12 to grow. He urged lawmakers to eliminate the 1.5% sales tax on farm equipment and said he is working on alternative markets for Mississippi commodities as China shifts purchases to Brazil.
On workforce, Hosemann promoted a proposed “Mississippi ReConnect” program that would let adults who lost jobs or want new skills return to community colleges tuition‑free. He said the idea mirrors a federal tax‑credit concept backed by President Donald Trump and is meant to raise incomes and keep pace with changing labor demands.
Roads, lottery and rural health care
Hosemann called for extending the state lottery, which he said has become a key source for road and bridge maintenance and generates about $40 million annually for education. He backed continued funding for site‑development grants, MDOT‑ranked capacity projects in high‑traffic and high‑crash corridors, and the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Program, which he said has reduced closed bridges from several hundred to under 100.
In a brief question‑and‑answer exchange, Hosemann said rural hospitals remain “critical” to keeping people in small towns and pointed to a new rural health initiative from the governor that he said appears broad and inclusive but still needs a funding plan. He predicted more of a “hub‑and‑spokes” model for delivering rural care as lawmakers and Congress reshape health‑care financing.
Military, Main Street and closing note
Hosemann, who has traveled with military units overseas, said he will push for state‑funded health coverage for roughly 11,000 to 12,000 National Guard and Army Reserve members to aid recruitment and retention. He also highlighted elevated suicide rates among Mississippi veterans and promised a state hotline and outreach effort, noting that most who die by suicide have never contacted the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
He closed by reaffirming support for the Mississippi Main Street program, crediting it with cleaner, more attractive downtowns that boost tourism and local pride. Hosemann told the audience the state is “in such tremendous shape” to confront its remaining challenges and said his goal is to keep Mississippi in that position as lawmakers return to the Capitol.
Below is the full transcript of Hosemann's talk:
So I’m going to start with something I think that we forget in Mississippi. We’ve been talking about it, I’ve written some articles on it, you may have seen some notes about it, but you have to remember that you’re sitting in the state that fully funded education twice, and now this year we’re fully funded again. You’re sitting in a state that cut over a billion dollars in income, grocery, all kinds of taxes, business taxes, and you’re seeing the results of that. You’re sitting in a state that has spent billions of dollars on infrastructure. Those of you who came from Rankin County today rode on the new road; they’re being created all over Mississippi.
You’re sitting in a state that has paid off, by the end of my term, 35% of its debt. Over $1 billion has been paid off already and will be paid off by the end of my term. You’re sitting in a state that fixed its retirement plan and put it on a long‑term goal. Ask people in Illinois and New York, California if they had done that.
So you’re sitting in a state with billions of dollars of new investment. You’re sitting in a state with the second fastest‑growing GDP. You’re sitting in a state that’s gone from 49th to 16th in education. You’re sitting in the state of Mississippi. It has never been like this.
Those of us, and you, have the opportunity to continue to have it excel. Those of you who’ve been around a little bit realize it’s never been like this. You never cut taxes, funded education, fixed a retirement plan, put it on long‑term history where you paid, finally had infrastructure improvements, education improving, billions of dollars being invested, GDP growth after growth, great test scores. Mississippi is the only state that can claim all of those. There is no other one.
So when we talk about something that to me reminds me of what he used to say, remember when he got hired, he would say, “Only positive Mississippi spoken here.” We have no reason not to have positive Mississippi spoken here. We have challenges. I’m gonna go through those in a process that we’re gonna go through this next year in the legislature, but we have positive results. We’re not talking about hopes and dreams and “maybe.” Look what we’ve done.
We are on the cusp ourselves of having a position this state has never been in. So you should be very proud of yourselves, a legislature that’s done most of this work and all the things that have gone over the last decade, the last few years particularly, to put Mississippi where it is. So when we discuss a legislative agenda, we’re building on success in Mississippi, and each of you have something to do with that, and we’re real proud of that.
So we’ll get first to the one I think everybody talks a lot about, which is education. As you know, we previously had a teacher pay raise here. We have had fully funded education. It’ll be the Senate position that we fully fund education again this year, be the third year in a row; it’s never been done in the history of the state.
That includes, as you always know, several people involved in critical aspects of education. The first, of course, is the student, the individual. Then the parent, the person that’s taking care and reading those things at night, making sure they get to school and all the other things. And the third critical component is the teacher.
We did a significant teacher pay raise just a couple of years ago, and it’s time again for another teacher pay raise. So you’ll see us discussing a teacher pay raise. And I think it’s time to include not only our teachers in the K–12 area, but also our professors at community colleges and the university system, particularly in our community colleges.
When I meet with them and discuss what’s going on there, they’re teaching students who go out and make more money than the teacher on their first job. So it’s upside down. I don’t know how we keep them, but they’re teaching these young people, particularly the skill sets to go forward and have more economics. You see it in nursing, you can see it in just about everything they’re doing.
So we have to make that competitive in order to have people to teach our young people how to go forward. I think it will include this year addressing community colleges and the compensation that we pay to them as well as the university system.
Over the years we have had situations where schools could hold somebody back. They had a veto power over kids moving around. It’s very rarely been used. When I’ve talked to different superintendents and whatnot, I’ll ask them, “Have you ever held anybody back from moving to another school?” “No, not really; we haven’t.” So we really haven’t done that.
I think that’s something that’s arcane and needs to be removed, where you don’t have the ability to hold a student back who wants to leave and go to another public school. There shouldn’t be a requirement for that. By the same token, the school to which that student would move needs to have the ability to accept that student under the terms that it thinks are appropriate. Those make sense to me. We don’t need a veto on kids moving around if they want to, and we certainly don’t need to educate local school boards on how they should accept students. So you’ll see that in the Senate legislation this coming year.
We started with the third‑grade reading gate. This is 10–13 years old now, and it has produced a phenomenal result. We’re reading like at the ninth best in the country and whatnot. But when I looked at these numbers, I looked at the eighth grade and it looks like a slant down. In the eighth grade we’re in the high forties on reading.
So what happened between the emphasis that we put on the third‑grade reading gate and what we have today? What’s the gap? Why is it there? In our discussions with the Department of Education and Dr. Ray Morgigno and teachers as we’ve gone around the state, we need to pick up that third‑grade reading gate and continue to emphasize reading and the ability to understand through the eighth grade.
So you’ll see us ask the Department of Education to come up with a plan to make sure that we don’t have any decrease in our learning from the third grade. It needs to carry all the way through to the eighth grade and then hopefully to a meaningful public job.
The other thing you’ve heard me talk about a lot, and that is more bothersome to me than just about any of the rest of this, is the chronic absenteeism that we’re facing here. After COVID, I would sit in my office and watch these COVID classes. I’d sit in there with our group and watch these kids when their younger brother would jump up on the bed with them, and they’re wrestling around or playing with the dog or whatever. That’s really not a cure. What happened was some people thought it was acceptable not to be in school.
Now how did we get there? Not only that, we’ve been working on this. It was 24% a couple years ago. We’re below the national average, like we are in a lot of things. We’re better off than they are. But it’s leaked up now to 27% chronic absentee, which means that they miss at least 10% of the school year. That is the anchor on the future. That’s the problem.
Without having that child sitting in that seat learning a skillset that will allow them to be financially viable in their personal life, we will not have achieved our education goals. We have to change that.
To do that, there are several different things. In my discussions with teachers and schools around the state, they want to make sure they have a warm and welcoming community. When you come to school, they want to say, “I am so glad you came today. How are you doing? What do you want to do today?” They want to have a warm, inviting community in the school district. We do too.
The other part of that is to have truancy officers that go out into the community and ask, “Why isn’t Wyatt at school? What’s the problem?” Now we have a lot of social services that we can work with people and whatnot. What we want to insert in there is, “Why isn’t Wyatt at school?”
As a part of that, when we started looking at it, we are paying these people with a college education $24,000 a year. Gross. So that means that these truancy officers, really on a mission for the Lord, are taking home about $1,200–$1,500 a month.
So when we started looking at truancy officers, we got to the point of asking, all right, so what happens? I met with truancy officers. “What did you do today? What have you done today?” “Well, I went out and I met with the mother and the son. The son’s bigger than the mother, and he said he wasn’t gonna come to school for whatever reason. So I had to go convince him that school was a good place for him to come. That was number one. Then at school we had somebody releasing some kind of sexting or something, so I had to go get with the students. We had to call the parents in,” and he went through his day. For that, he makes twelve or fifteen hundred bucks.
So what we want to do is raise the compensation level of those people. These people are part psychiatrists, part child counselor, part family counselor, part educator, part uncle, part coach, part everything. I don’t know what the criteria would be, but there’s no degree for what they do. We think that they should have a junior college or community college degree and be eligible to work in this capacity and not have to have a full university degree. So you’ll see that in our bills this year.
It is my intention to have a school resource officer in every school in the state, and those individual officers are equipped to make sure that those kids come back to school in whatever capacity they need to. So you’ll see that in our proposals as well.
In Mississippi, federal law says that you have to be able to educate every child up to their capacity. What’s their learning capacity? How much do you bring them up to do? We failed in that on dyslexia, autism, several different ones. A lot of schools don’t have any of that. They consider those kids to be less‑able learners and just kind of put them in a corner on occasion.
So what we want to look at, in addition to what we’ve got right now—where we allow for children to move to a place where they can actually get their necessary and federally required services—we want to look at special‑purpose schools. In those special‑purpose schools, it would be a regional school in which we can bring these kids where school districts don’t have the capacity or are not able to get a BCBA or whatever to come to work there. We would bring these kids to a central location where they can grow, reach their potential in this country, and they can be in the seat that you’re sitting in. They’re capable of doing that if we’re capable of delivering that kind of service. So you’ll see that in our bills this year.
We have about 200 agency boards and commissions. If I asked all of you to determine the ones we really needed, I think we would probably have a handful. There are ones that have never met, really haven’t met yet. There are ones that are writing regulations that would scare you to death. There are ways in which these individuals charge fees and you can’t get your license on time, all kinds of different things.
So it’s time for us to look at your core competency—what your particular division or agency is doing. What are you supposed to be doing? And then are you accomplishing that core mission? If not, what are you doing and why are you doing that and not the other? Where do those duplicate, and where are we out of sorts with people because we’re doing things that we really shouldn’t be doing, or we’re doing something somebody else is already doing?
I think it’s time for us to look at our org chart this year. We will do so. And as you know, we’re all grown people; everybody has a constituency. But what I am most interested in is whether or not my citizens can touch an agency with the least amount of time, the least amount of effort, and the most information. Their time is valuable. When they’re trying to work with us through something they can’t get through or can’t get an answer to, it’s costing them money and it’s costing us money. So we don’t need to be doing that.
The ease and the ability for individuals and citizens in Mississippi to actually do work with our state government is most important. There’ll be some savings in that. We’re not talking about laying people off. We can be more efficient like we are right now. We can be more efficient, but we can accomplish those goals.
This year you’ll see us have a significant corporate reorganization, what I would call statewide reorganization, to get our org chart right—get the ones that aren’t meeting off, get the ones that aren’t meeting appropriately. As part of that, there’ll be some licensing reform.
If you speak to a cosmetologist or a house contractor or whomever, you’ll see the complications that go with them even getting a license to do this or renewing their licenses. In some instances we found some of these licensing boards have accumulated significant amounts of money and not ever lowered their fees—the fees that the people pay to have themselves regulated.
So I think we need to look at how we license ourselves. A licensing board would involve the people who actually do the work, whatever their particular license is. They need to determine who gets a license and who gets their license removed. But the back‑office part of this—making sure if you had to have a degree for this, you had one, all the back‑office stuff, the investigatory stuff, all of that, running the right information technology, all of that stuff, the software—we have duplications of software everywhere. All of that can be done better, faster, quicker, cheaper. That’s what you’ll see us doing this year.
When you start to address the size of government—and government has been reduced since I was there; it was 26,000 employees when we started, there are 24,000 employees today—we are looking at the effective utilization of our employees and what goes on there. But there are two things that I think need to be increased.
One is tourism. We started that three years ago. The governor veto would allow that. We’ve gone back and forth. We need a Department of Tourism that focuses on tourism. It’s our fourth‑largest income producer, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s really a lot of times the face of the community, and it’s been headquartered in MDA forever.
Now it needs to see the bright light of really getting together with all of these Main Streets and these other organizations, community organizations, all these other things that are selling their towns and their locations. We need to have a state asset that we use like that. So I think that has risen up to where it probably needs to be an addition. The cost of that is minuscule because we’ve been funding it anyway.
The other one is a cybersecurity department. We have virtually nothing in that area. We have like one person at the Attorney General’s office. We had a Homeland Security person who really didn’t evolve out; he has been promoted to the U.S. Attorney’s office. So we really have not looked strongly at cybersecurity.
There’s more money stolen on the internet than there is from the banks, and that is only expanding tremendously, expeditiously. What’s happening to us is we’re losing what the key components should be of that. The first is to protect our seniors and our people from cybersecurity threats. That’s done through information. As you know, they have hacked into our schools, who have had to pay money; they’ve hacked into our hospitals. So there’s a state component of that, in addition to a regional component.
The second is the security setup to do that. How are we all protected, how much does it cost, and how do we go about doing that? Then in addition, there’s the part: can we stop the money? Can we get the money back? Right now, if you contact the Secret Service and the FBI quickly enough, they may be able to freeze it in one of the bank accounts that’s still in the United States. So it is so important that you have a timely, complete report to federal authorities that can do that kind of thing.
The last thing is prosecution. How can we hold somebody liable, particularly when they’re out of the country? Cybersecurity is here with multipliers and AI. You can think you got a conversation from your mother or whoever; it sounds just like her. It is phenomenal what they can do and it will only expand. We need to address that society‑wide in Mississippi this year. So you’ll see us talk about a Department of Cybersecurity.
I just found so interesting this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. After years of Congress sidestepping and postponing the issue, lawmakers will have to confront the program’s challenges before the end of their term. They’re talking about the new senators that just got elected. Failure to act will trigger automatic reductions in Social Security in 2032.
The article goes on. That cost is about twice what the expenses were, similar to what we had in Mississippi. In Mississippi, we were spending $3.2 billion and we were collecting $2 billion. That did not work. Instead of being like the national Social Security, we addressed that.
There is very little, financially, that is the equivalent of what the legislature did with PERS. By taking additional contributions of $184 million a year and starting a new, basically 401(k)‑type plan with a defined benefit plan with Social Security, doing that to give meaningful retirement to our new employees and stop the bleeding on the old.
Now we’ve been requested by the PERS board to have a significant contribution at this time to further allow us to expedite to where we’re at least 80% funded. Eighty percent is what the actuaries consider to be fully funded. So the Senate this year will be discussing significant contributions to the PERS plan to get us to that level. I think we have a generally very receptive Senate and House on that particular matter. We will be releasing that as we do the budget and the rest of the things here shortly.
Part of that, as y’all know, is that we worry about things that don’t go well. I just told you how well we’re doing. There’s never been a time in which there weren’t bad times, whether it be a Katrina event or whatever, where we’ve had to suffer here in this state. We have one of those going on now; it’s in agriculture.
What we want to do is eliminate the 1.5% sales tax on agricultural equipment. That is a small token toward what’s happening in agriculture. In agriculture, we’re in our second and third year of massive losses. Just in meetings this past week, I was talking with a husband‑and‑wife team that farm. “What are you doing?” “We’re going to sell 240 acres.” “You’re going to sell 240 acres, but you’ve been acquiring—some of it was family land.” “No, we have to sell it to pay off last year’s debt. Not to put it in the bank, not to retire, but to pay off how much we lost last year.”
If you look at any of the numbers, we were selling our beans for $10 and it cost us $12. It doesn’t compute. So that problem is systemic now and it’s going to be systemic in the future. Those of you who trust China probably just need to leave right now, because I don’t. They’re going to jerk our agricultural string as many times as they think it’s to their own effect. You can see their investments in Brazil; they’re not coming back.
So how we help our agriculture, which was forever $8–$9 billion a year in revenue—about 50‑something percent of our soybeans were sold to China—those types of issues are going to come to Mississippi and they are here now, and our agriculture group is struggling. We are, and I have particularly been, involved in looking at alternative sources for utilization of the products we produce. Those are ongoing. I anticipate and I’m hopeful that we will be able to make some determinations and to have some additional markets for the goods that we are so blessed to grow in Mississippi.
On economic and workforce development, there’s something that I looked at two years ago. We got hung up on some other things. We want to start something called Mississippi ReConnect. In Mississippi ReConnect, if your job is lost for whatever reason, or you’re repurposed for whatever reason, or you just want to upgrade your skills and you’re 23, 24, 25, 27, whatever your age is, we want you to be able to come back to the community college system and upgrade your skill set for free, no charge.
Now, President Trump is on this as well. You see he’s given a credit if you come back for something less than 160 days or so. If you come, whatever those days were, he will allow you to have a tax credit for what your expenses were to come back and get yourself back to a higher level of skill competence and raise your income level and your lifestyle. We want to do the same thing as President Trump. We want to make sure that we have the ability, through our community college system, which is phenomenal, to have those people be retrained and repurposed. So you’ll see us talking about Mississippi ReConnect, which involves just what I was speaking to you about there.
Over the years, I’ve met with the governor a number of different times. We have done site development funds. You’ll see the Senate propose site development funds again. Those of you from Madison—go look at what they’re doing out there; it’s phenomenal. Site development helps the governor have things that are ready for occupation. I never liked this “shovel‑ready” phrase, but if you’ve got flat land with water, sewer, and electricity to it, you’re in the game and we’re ready to go right now.
Every year we put up 15–20 million dollars a year, sometimes more than that, for different site locations. I anticipate we will do that again this year to make sure that we have sites that are ready.
I’d like to extend the lottery this time. It sunsets next year. We need to keep it for maintenance for roads and bridges, as simple as that. It’s been very effective for us. Of course, it’s produced about $40 million a year for education. So extending that lottery is a good idea.
We continue to develop the ability to deliver our goods. That is so important, and also important that people can get to work. Not only can you deliver your goods, but people can get to their offices back and forth. Those of you who come down Lakeland Drive know how difficult that can be. We need to continue capacity projects. We skipped those last year, and there are capacity projects there. They’re all listed by MDOT.
It changed when I came in. It used to be whoever the senior senator was got a capacity project, but we don’t do that now. We let MDOT pick the ones that are most traveled, most accidents, most deadly in some instances. We get those done first and then we move on down the road to other matters, no pun intended. That has proven well. The first three were done in north Mississippi, which shows you that we’ve taken a lot of the politics out. The next two are here in central Mississippi—Gluckstadt/Madison and Rankin County—and also on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at Diamondhead and the I‑10 corridor.
Continuing to build where our people are going to work and living every day is important to us, and we want to continue to do that. There’s something called ERBR, the Emergency Road and Bridge Program. We funded it every year, and it has worked every year. When it started, we had over 200–300 different bridges that were out. If you remember, Governor Bryant had to close some on purpose because we were going to hold back a whole lot of federal funds. We’ve worked down to probably less than a hundred. That program has been very successful in allocating needed funds basically for fixing bridges in Mississippi. I think the Senate ought to continue that.
I was blessed to have the opportunity to travel with the military on several different occasions—Iraq, Afghanistan Kuwait a couple of times, Germany, out to train with them in Texas. One of the things that would be most helpful for them is twofold. One is to provide health insurance for the 11,000 to 12,000 men and women that are in the National Guard and Army Reserves here in Mississippi. Those healthcare premiums are extensive. It helps in recruitment. The individuals at the Guard have told us this is their number‑one project. If we could get health insurance for their Guard members, that would be a significant impetus to them staying in the National Guard, and we intend to do that.
The other one is less likely to be spoken about. Suicide rates among the military are 30 per hundred thousand in Mississippi; normally it’s 17. We have significantly more people dying from suicide that came out of the military. We will have a suicide hotline here and an emphasis on that. When I talked to the head of Veterans Affairs in Washington, he mentioned that over 60% of the suicides have never contacted the Veterans Administration at all. So we need to get people into the process. We need to let them know that there is help for them.
You just can’t expect them to come back from missions like you just saw Sunday and walk into Wendy’s and be thankful. It takes a while. Assimilation takes a while, and Mississippi needs to honor them by making sure they stay with us.
We have Mississippi Main Street. We have been a big supporter of Main Street. You see it—you see the improvements not only in pictures on the side of a building, but just the gradual cleaning up and better look of small towns in Mississippi. That’s a healthy thing for all of our visitors. It’s a healthy thing for small towns to revitalize their own interest in what they’re doing. So you will see us supporting the Main Street Association again this year.
So I’m right on time here, and the band hasn’t started to set up yet, so I guess I’m alright. You just need to know that we are in such tremendous shape right now to address the issues that face us. We’ve never been in that shape before, and we are in it today. Our goal is to make sure we continue to be in the position that we are today.
Alright, Emily? I’ll answer any questions that I can, and if not, we’ll get Wyatt or somebody to answer.
We’re going to open this up to a few minutes of question and answer. As always, we’re going to limit our questions coming from the press corps here in the front. Who wants to take the first one?
Q: A year or two ago, rural hospitals were in crisis and you didn’t mention that in your talk today. Has there been progress, and can you talk a little bit about what’s being done in that area?
A: I physically went to Greenwood, Greenville, Tupelo. I’ve been to a number of hospitals. We got the plan from the governor. As you know, he didn’t provide it to everybody until last week, and I got the rural initiative plan. It looks like it covers a lot of different topics. I’m anxious to see the funding of that, and we’ll be proceeding on that.
Rural healthcare in Mississippi is critical to us, and it’s the only way that we keep people in smaller towns of Mississippi and smaller places and not just in a Jackson or a Gulfport or a Tupelo. It will involve a number of different things, some of which we’re planning right now, which is congressional work that will come to us for what they’re going to do with healthcare. I anticipate that will come here in the next month or so. The rural healthcare initiatives that I initially read from the governor seem to be very broad‑band and inclusive of making sure that we’re reaching all of the places like Greenwood, Greenville and small towns in Mississippi to provide that as we go forward. There’s little doubt that there will be more of a hub‑and‑spokes type of arrangement, where we make sure that we are spending the funds necessary in a smart way.
