The saga of Jackson’s unclean drinking water has entered a new phase: Federal takeover. The feds have fired the mayor and his public works administration and replaced them with an interim public works director, Ted Henifin.
It’s not a bad gig for Ted, who will make $400,000 a year and will be given a boatload of federal and state money to work with.
That may seem like a lot of money, but given the federal deficit is $1.4 trillion this year, I guess the feds can afford it. There are some benefits to being part of the richest nation in the history of the world — a nation that can seemingly print as much money as it wants and never fail to find buyers.
And it may not seem like that much given that the water crisis was costing the citizens a million dollars a day. That’s over $60 million total for the duration of the most recent crisis. You can probably add another $50 million for the other five boil water periods that came before.
Mr. Henifin’s $400,000 annual compensation towers over the compensation of the most recent Jackson public works director, who was making less than a fourth as much. Even Mayor Lumumba’s official compensation doesn’t come close at $120,000 year.
The $400,000 underscores the extent to which the city administration was simply out of their league in dealing with a problem far beyond their skill set.
My guess is that the city could have turned the water department around if it had hired someone at the $175,000 level and given them the authority and funding to properly staff and maintain the treatment facilities. Instead, they were advertising for engineers on the city’s internal help wanted bulletin board with a Jackson residency requirement. That just wasn’t gonna cut it.
The EPA takeover underscores the distrust the EPA has in the city administration. An independent bank account will be set up to handle the money, keeping it outside the reach of any city officials.
That should solve another big problem: State distrust about Jackson city officials — mainly Lumumba. All the shenanigans surrounding the waste disposal contract, the airport, the Savannah waste treatment plant, the Siemens water meters and many more shady contracts have made state officials hesitant to hand over more money, understandably so.
This state distrust hasn’t been enough to get the governor or the state legislature to overturn the ill-conceived minority set aside laws which lay the groundwork for much of the corruption.
These set aside laws were well meaning but had a big unintended consequence — corruption. Legitimate companies are forced to deal with “front men” to fulfill the set aside requirements and get the contract. The $100 million Siemens water meter deal is the poster child for this.
Indeed, the unqualified set aside contractors in the Siemens deal laid the groundwork for the water disaster. Poorly installed meters malfunctioned, causing nutty water bills. The nutty water bills led to a confidence crisis in the water billing department. People quit paying their bills and the water department didn’t have the moxie to shut them off, having proven their incompetence.
All of this led to a drastic drop in water department revenue. Rather than roll up his sleeves and fix the situation —something that would have required a $400,000 skill set — Lumumba just cut the water department budget and used one-time capital funds to pay the operating budget. Eventually, it all came crashing down.
The mayor could have appealed to state officials for help, but he was too politically arrogant to kiss the governor’s ring and make it happen. So the feds finally intervened and took over the whole mess.
I tried to find out if the feds had ever taken over the day-to-day management of a city’s water supply. A Google search turned up nothing. This may be a first. Not exactly the thing a city wants to be first in.
National perception aside, it may actually be a great thing for Jackson residents and the beleaguered restaurateurs. By the time it’s all over, Jackson may have one of the best water systems in the country — all paid by federal dollars. Talk about the law of unintended consequences!
It is amazing to see how the national media portrayed this crisis as the inevitable result of Republican racists starving a black city of its share of funds. Kudos to Governor Reeves for debunking this with actual facts and figures, not that the liberal national media would let facts interfere with their preferred storyline. That’s biased and lazy journalism.
What is true is that this crisis had a long time coming. It started with installing a fancy membrane plant in 2005 in a city that was using muddy lake water as its source. The new-fangled technology didn’t live up to billing and became a maintenance hog. Operating a dual membrane plant alongside a conventional plant just doubled the skill and maintenance required.
Also true is the slow but sure decline of the Jackson tax base, which siphoned off the best water customers and taxpayers, furthering the financial strain. But this wasn’t racism. This was people wanting bigger houses and plenty of available land.
In that sense, Mayor Lumumba got stuck with no chair. Of all his miscues, failing to let citizens know about the EPA emergency decree for over a year was by far his worst.
This is just the latest in a series of federal takeovers in Mississippi. The Hinds County jail, the state mental health system, the MDOC and other governmental entities have been under various federal decrees.
It is a strange form of federalism. Its efficacy remains to be seen.
