MDOT presents The Extra Mile Podcast legislative session.

(Paul) Welcome into another episode of The Extra Mile podcast legislative session. I’m Paul Katool, Digital Media Manager and I’m joined by my Co-host as always Will Craft. He handles Government and Constituent affairs here at the agency. And Will, the 2022 legislative session is done. Sine die was April 5. I know everybody is very excited about that. And no better way to wrap things up or begin to wrap things up then have the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Mississippi, Delbert Hosemann in with us today.

(Will) That’s right.

(Paul) A little information about the Lieutenant Governor. He was elected in November 2019. He’s Mississippi’s 33rd Lieutenant Governor and he previously served as Secretary of State. Governor Hosemann, we really appreciate your being here today and we also like to throw out a little fun fact. You’re an avid marathoner. Is that correct?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) I use to be before I got into politics.

(Paul) There you go.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) It’s all I can do to get to the Capitol. We spent a lot of time, we started early, I guess maybe in my thirties. We ran the New York marathon a couple of times, Boston. We did what’s called the Hood to Coast which is a 200-mile race with a team. We really enjoyed ourselves over the years. It kinda kept me semi healthy anyway.

(Paul) Good deal.

(Will) We found out its National Walking Day according to someone’s calendar.
So, we thought that was appropriate to mention today.
(Lt. Gov. Hosemann) Very appropriate. I was out running the other day and a lady pushing a stroller went by me so, I guess I’m kind of slowing down. I don’t know. Whatever.

(Will) Well, Governor, Thanks so much for being here. We want to ask you a little bit about yourself. What drove you to get into politics originally?

(Lt. Gov. Hosemann) I don’t really know. We’re still trying to figure that out. First of all, I practiced law for 38 years. We had a tremendous law firm. They are many good law firms in Mississippi, but we were with Phelps Dunbar. It was an original firm here, in New Orleans, Houston, Tampa, London, all over. We had a corporate practice. You know, we represented a lot of businesses in Mississippi. And when they acquired other businesses or merged or expanded and tax issues and those kinds of things. So, we were a business lawyer.

And then when I was about late, I guess mid-50s, the secretary of state Eric Clark decided not to run. And I had been really, didn’t think that our business laws were very good, and they weren’t. And you know, every time I had to interpret them or represent a client, I said, “Man, I wonder what idiot wrote this?” And so, I came home and told my wife, I said, “Look, I think I’m gonna run for Secretary of State and I’m gonna change all the business laws.” And she asked if I’d lost my mind. That was the first thing. And so, in my first precinct the vote was one to one. So, it took a while for me to get out of my own house.

But when we did, we were blessed enough to win that election to be hired to do that work. And we rewrote all the business laws in Mississippi. The LLC laws have now proliferated, and we have over a 150,000 of them in Mississippi, security laws, charity laws.

I was real interested in, which is something we’re gonna talk about here, in land and how we managed our public affairs. And when I got to looking at it, we have 16th Section Lands, 640,000 acres of it. And so, it became a real pilgrimage for me to get that land running right and so I got it up to, we didn’t have any timber, I mean y’all face this over here. We had no timber plan. Some of them were in crayon. You know, every 16th Section in Mississippi is owned by the school districts. And so, the top 22 counties, we didn’t, it does not own there because we got that from the Indians and the Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty.

But the rest of it, Thomas Jefferson gave us our state in 1817. He kept out of the thirty-six sections, he kept the sixteenth one for education which was brilliant and it’s paying dividends today, but it wasn’t paying enough dividends I didn’t think. So, I actually got it up to about a $100 million a year in revenue from timber sales, farm sales, duck hunting leases. A lot of which had been favorably negotiated.

(Will) I think it’s up to about 20,000 acres. Does that sound right?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) We have 640,000 acres.

(Will) Oh wow.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) A little bit off of public lands. And then I got really involved in talking to some people about the fact that they didn’t have places to hunt and fish, So, we ended up acquiring a lot of public land. We acquired 17, I think 17,000 acres in the lower Delta. And it’s now a wildlife management area.

We acquired the mouth of the Pearl River which had been given to the family I acquired it from off the state. I think it with the Spanish land grant. Well, so we got like three or 4,000 acres. You own that now. And then we bought pretty much half of Cat Island which you now own. And I think in all of those I was able to either get donations or other monies. I think we a total to acquire about 20-something something thousand acres probably about $400,000.

(Will) Oh wow. Well, I think you had many successes as just alluded to in Secretary of State’s office. What drove you to make that next jump over to the Lieutenant Governor?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Well, I had an office on the basement floor, and I thought well if I go upstairs, I get another office. But the trick was what happened was you get a decrease the Lieutenant Governor is part-time. So, he or she, we’ve had both make $60,000 a year and so you’re considered to be part-time. That’s not accurate. As you well know, I’m sitting here today after the session. So, no, it’s a full-time job. And the Secretary of State’s pay was $90,000 so, I actually took a cut in pay which is another issue I had at home, but regardless of that.

(Paul) Oh wow. Well, so, Governor.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Let’s get to y’ all’s stuff.

(Paul) Oh absolutely. Yeah. Let’s talk a little MDOT. It was a really good session for infrastructure. It was a really good session in particular for transportation infrastructure. A lot of additional money for MDOT. Can you just start to break that down for us?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) I can. And I was real pleased. You know, we need the roads and bridges and the things that we do. And I was real pleased Brad came by. I’ve known Brad forever. Just been really a great guy as a chief of staff for Cindy’s chief of staff, headed the Republican party, worked here for years, worked for Dick Hall. And I want to talk about Dick in a second, but we had a really, we’ve had a long personal relationship. I’ve always admired him in his career and how he’s worked. And he said that he thought this was the best year that MDOT’s ever had in the legislature, and I think that’s probably accurate.

(Will) I agree.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) When we look at what we did there, not only did we get the two point eight or nine billion dollars that the federal government is going to give us and we could have quit there and said, you know, victory, but we didn’t. We put up the match this year another forty million dollars which you’ll need to match your federal money. But then we went further. We got from Brad and Commissioner’s King and Simmons and Caldwell, we got your list of what you have to do for maintenance and what you had to do for new construction. I’ve traveled just about every road in Mississippi now and I know that for example Highway 15 is way behind in its expansion and so is seven south of Oxford and a number of others.

And so, we decided that we would accelerate the maintenance program. And so, we put together another $45 million to bring the 2023 into 2022. And in addition to that we put in $200 million to some of which is to advance some of your early work on getting these roads started which is an issue that I think we all have which is the timeliness of the delivery of the product.

So, one of the things I really want to work with MDOT this year is why are we taking so long to get our products completed. I’m hopeful that we’ll look at some things like having construction companies and the different ones y’ all do business with, there are a bunch of them around Mississippi, having them involved earlier. We’ve discussed that we think we have capabilities within MDOT to do a lot of the engineering work. And I think we’re outsourcing about $60 million a year or $60 million would finish a good bit of Highway 15.

So, we’re real interested in giving y’ all your head and letting y’ all run with the ball here. And to do that we upped the salaries over here on purpose with malice a forethought to make sure that we could keep and maintain the good engineers and people that work here. And the only other side of that is that having done all of that and spent really hundreds of millions of dollars of Mississippi money, it’s time for y’ all, it’s game time.

(Will) That’s right.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) We’ve had spring practice. It’s time to go play.

(Will) The director has already said you know with the increased resources comes an increased responsibility. You know it’s time to show up and really show their appreciation of those.

(Paul) Absolutely. We’re ready.

(Will) And hopefully, obviously those additional resources will certainly help go a long way.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) So, yeah. In addition, we’re of course y’ all are, it’s kind of a semi part of y’ all, but we put another one hundred million dollars in ERBRF.

(Will) Excellent program.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) In addition to the money that we’ve already talked about that will hopefully be coordinated with y’ all particularly on the quality of the work product and what goes in and whatnot. But hopefully that’ll be coordinated with y’ all so that’s an additional $100 million for your feeder county roads that’ll come in. I thought that was really important that we again come back with ERBRF with a significant contribution.

So, in addition to all of that there’s $75 million in actual line items for y’ all that are actually requested by senators or members of the house for specific items. So, you’ll see a lot of that going on. I looked at the map and I was real pleased that Brad brought over the map of what we’re doing, and it looks like that 1985 or whatever it was planned that every county in Mississippi is fixing to have construction in it from you, you are basically all of yours, but in addition to that the hundred million dollars from ERBRF there’s not one county that’s not going to have somebody maintaining, paving or new construction.

(Will) That’s exactly right.

(Paul) You mentioned Commissioner Hall one of the main figures in Mississippi transportation history. Did you want to touch on him before we move on?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Oh yeah. Dick, back he ran for the House of Representatives, and I thought he was such a neat person, and he ran where I lived and so I worked on his campaign. Now, this is like way back. And then Dick and I became, I had some business relationships and whatnot and so we worked together during the flood. We were together back whenever that was ‘77 or ‘79. We worked together during the flood hauling paperwork, counter offices and all that kind of stuff and just have known him a long time. And then of course when he was a senator, he was you know appointed. He was a Republican in a Democratic administration. And he was appointed Head of Appropriations which is probably about one of the top two or three jobs over there.

People have always recognized Dick’s capabilities and the fact that he really had a leadership role. Then we came back to Dick again when we did where you have to show your ID, your voter ID.

(Will) That’s right.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) And what happened was we to get that I had to go to the Department of Justice and one of the things they said was you know, first of all it’s a miracle Mississippi didn’t get sued. Every other state got sued. We didn’t, so whatever. But as part of that we came to Dick and your Commissioners and asked if they would provide transportation for people to the county courthouse to get a voter ID or get an ID made.

So, we put cameras in every courthouse and MDOT provided through your services, ancillary services, provided transportation for people. That was a key component to defeat any kind of an indication that this would be something people couldn’t get. Of course, there was no charge for it. The state provided that. But we also provided transportation through MDOT.

(Paul) Excellent.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) So, anyway our history goes way back, and Dick has been a champion from everything from voter ID to appropriations. And we were honored to have him in his old haunts there in the Senate on Monday and do a proclamation for him which he got a long-standing ovation.

(Will) He’s very special. I know he appreciated it. He’s made that comment already how much that meant to him. It’s selfishly I must admit you know the voter ID initiative that process will always be one of my fondest memories. I was an intern at the Republican Party while that was going on. My little cubicle was basically made of boxes of signatures. So, I just yeah, every day going through boxes.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Senator Fillingame did a lot of that.

(Will) That’s right. That’s right.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) He did a lot of it. We appreciate your help on it. But you know, we never did get sued on that. And now if you told somebody that they didn’t have to bring an ID whether it was a Republican or a Democrat they wouldn’t they’d think that was a bad idea.

(Will) It seems strange. Yeah. Any other legislation that you know, I know it was a huge session. We had all kinds of issues tax cut, education, teacher pay raise, anything else you want to touch on?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Yeah. We put some money aside for ports. I think that’s really important in Mississippi. You know, you are part of the transportation portal. You know, it’s rails which we gave some money to either refurbish or do short range rails or short rail where they’re not you know the big what used to be Illinois Central and the others.

(Will) That’s right.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) But we do, the small, short parks, short railroad things and those things are very important to Mississippi. The ports are very important to Mississippi. The fact that we can get on the Mississippi River is very different. There’s only a few spots Vicksburg has an excellent one. Greenville has one. Natchez is a little bit smaller. Rosedale has one. And then you have the ports on the Coast which are Pascagoula and Gulfport which are very important and critical to keeping Ingles and Chevron and the rest of them. So, we put some money in ports and that really no pun intended feeds into the highway departments.

(Will) True.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) So, what we’re expecting is that for example we’ve never built the project that freezes liquid gas, liquid nitrogen We’ve never built that. That’s never been completed just south of Chevron. Now with what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine we have an opportunity to finish that and actually export the frozen natural gas to Europe which hopefully they will use. The Ukraine thing is just a total disaster. But as a part of that, I mean y’ all fit into all of this.

(Will) That’s exactly right.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) They’re part of the puzzle actually.

(Will) Let’s switch this up a bit. I know it’s something not directly related to transportation but the MFLEX. I know that’s a passion of yours. Would you want to talk about that a little bit?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) We have been trying to do that for the three years I was here and the year before I came to Lieutenant Governor. So, it was started by the local economic developers. And what they wanted to do was simplify the application process where we could hit what I believe is our most important easy way. We are best used to assimilate like 50, 75, a 100-person employers. Because our workforce we’re fully employed right now basically, when your four percent unemployment is basically full, and anybody wants a job can get one.

(Will) It’s pretty good.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) So anyway to do that and so that we don’t plagiarize one company from another the smaller incremental growth is what would attract and keep people here. Young people could out of college or like yourself or just companies moving in here. So, we wanted to have a program where they could get all their tax benefits while they’re sitting in Ohio deciding whether they’re going to come here or not. MFLEX does that. It’s a great program. It summarizes all the various tax benefits, and you can sit there if you tell me how much you’re going to pay people and then how much you’re going to spend on capital expenses, we can tell you what your tax breaks are.

(Will) That’s awesome.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Yeah. Our economic development I think that’s going to be, no disrespect to anybody else, but that will be a bigger economic driver than the tax relief.

(Will) Sure. Very well. Yeah. Any other measures? I know, Paul, you have a question. Legislation left on the table?

(Paul) Oh yeah.

(Will) Steal your question. Anything kind of

(Paul) All good.

(Will) looking forward to next year?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) I think we still have about $400 million of ARPA money that we need. We’re spending money on water about $750 million on water and sewer projects around the state. Well, we’ll want to match your $40 million next year to keep you in line with your federal dollars that are coming in here. Eventually that’ll be $200 million.

(Will) Would like that.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) And so, I think that’s it, but I also think some of next year as we finish out that last $400 million and do some other things. There’s some education things that we haven’t done although we got a teacher pay and we got some a lot of money for refurbishing our schools. There’s some things that need to be touched there.

I’m very interested as we are pouring this money which is your money into all of these projects that we have, we have measurables. Like if we’re giving you x amount of dollars as MDOT $200 million we want to see dirt moving and asphalt concrete going down and bridges being built. So, I think some of what we will be doing will be tracking your progress. Now we as long as you’re performing, we want to be behind you pushing. And if you’re not performing then we need to move our assets to somebody that will. That’s the way it was when I was in business and that’s the way it ought to be in public life as well.

(Will) Pretty reasonable expectation.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) It is. I mean y’ all have had the best year you’ve ever had. And now like we talked about a minute ago, it’s game time.

(Will) That’s right.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) We need for y’ all to perform. When I asked Brad about performance charts and those kinds of things. We used to have something called a PERT chart program analysis. So, what you would do is you’d set time frames like we’re going to bid it by this, it’s going to be constructed by this, the dirt’s going to move the environment by this, eminent domain by this.

So, you’d have a whole chart when something is to be done. And I’m hopeful that y’all will come back with those as you prioritize. You’ve already prioritized. We basically the political arm of the state did not fool with what you designated as priorities. Whatever you said was the No. 1. There’s no politics in that. So, with that given then you ought to be able to come back and say we’re going to do Highway 15 or there’s a bypass in Port Gibson. I mean they’re all over the map there.

But we’re going to do that under this process. We’re going to acquire the land by x. We’re going to do the bids by y. We’re going to have the environment done by this. We’re you know, so that you have a chart and then we want to see that chart. We want to see you hitting your achievables every time you do that. And if we find our if we sit here a year from now and there’s no new dirt being moved, then we need to have another meeting.

(Will) Sure. And that’s something that we can be excited about showing our success. You know, hopefully we come back in a year quite the opposite end of that spectrum. We can see all this has been done completed efficiently and well you know, that’s got to be the goal moving forward.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Yeah. You have the standards already. I mean you know what thickness and what kind of underground’s supposed to be and what the bridges are supposed to hold. I mean you’ve already done that.

(Paul) Real quick. Topic of conversations out there right now is the brain drain in Mississippi. You can’t see everybody here. We’re watching on tv but a lot of young people in the room with us. So, what are your thoughts in kind of keeping Mississippi’s young talent in the state?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Well first of all the reason you stay here are two or three. First is the economic realities. You’ve got to have a job. If you get out of college or junior college or get a skills set to be a welder or whatever, whatever job you’re going to do, we have to have a position for you. So, if I don’t have a job for you, you’re gonna move anyway.

The second thing you want is a quality-of-life feature. You want to be if you’re a hunter, you want to be where can hunt or if you’re a fisherman or you like the water or you whatever you’re a golfer or whatever. We need to have the amenities of a cultural life for you. And they’ll be an announcement next Tuesday of a major step on that.

(Will) Alright.

(Paul) Woah!

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) So, we need to have a quality-of-life. And the third one that goes directly into that is your education. Now you’re going to only go where you can educate your children or in my case grandchildren. You’re only going to be where you can educate your children. Most of that about 93 or 23 of it is done in public education. So, we have to have a really good public education. If you want a Catholic education or you want a stay-at-home education, homeschooled, whatever you want to do we have to have that available for you in Mississippi.

And then the last one which is one we have problems with here in the city is you have to have a safe environment. So, we have to have your job. We have to have your cultural things, the people you like to live around and associate with in your off-duty times. Then we have to have education and it has to be a safe environment. So, y’all fall into almost all of those. I mean MDOT touches all of those particular ones.

So, it’s not like you’re in a vacuum and you’re just building a road. What you’re doing is building a road to the new subdivision where people are going to live. What you’re doing is building a road to the new industrial park where people are going to work. What you’re doing is building a road to the school system where people are going to go to school. So, you’re integrally involved in all aspects of that other than the security part which our sheriffs and police departments do. No, but y’all need to succeed for us to succeed as a state y’all need to succeed.

(Paul) Certainly. Good to hear that.

(Will) I certainly appreciate that.

(Paul) Yeah. Absolutely.

(Will) Your thoughts on that I mean that’s very encouraging to hear you know, I think you’re exactly right on all those.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) That’s good. There’s an election in another year or so.

(Paul) There we go.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Help me out, Man.

(Will) Well, taking it totally out of the box here. I know you spend a lot of time on the roads. There’s a lot of time traveling around the state.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) I do.

(Will) Is there a stop in, a hot spot that you anytime you’re going through there, I’ve got to stop in here and get a bite to eat anywhere that sticks out maybe back home?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Well, there’s a few that I have kind of started to haunt. I don’t want to give too many away but the Exxon station in Winona has our front has a bunch of guys that are sitting around there, I think 24 hours a day. I’ve never been in there and they have they make really good biscuits and sausage in there. And so, if you’re running around on Interstate 55 early in the morning which I try to do when I’m driving out to go somewhere I like to stop by the Exxon and say you know, how are we doing you know, what’s going on. And I can assure you they will tell you quickly how your performance is. So, there are a couple of spots around.

One of the things I want to stop in and will this year is our parks, our parks and our abysmal shape. And we’ve appropriated this past year about almost $40 million to start rehabbing our parks. And that’s a place that all Mississippians should be able to stop. There’s more like wildlife management where you can hunt or take your child, a girl or boy fishing or whatever. And then there are places to stay. All of those are in abysmal repairs. We had the architects take look at it and its’s about a $160 million to fix them.

But I want to have it where people stop in their parks. And it’s local but it’s also a big tourist destination. People drive through here to go over to Alabama or something I wanted to stop here.

(Will) That’s right.

So, we’ve got some places that I would like for people to stop and then some that I do on occasion.

(Will) But it may be due to Covid or otherwise, but it does seem like just in general camping is made like a return to the forefront.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) You know, it is.

(Will) I see the D’Lo Water Park is full every time I drive through there. So, you know, I can’t imagine what these larger

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) And ours are our pads are broken. We don’t even have the electrical hookups for the bigger rigs that you see running around. Those don’t work on a lot of our parks. Our refrigerator is broken. There’s rod in some of the buildings. It’s just not acceptable. And you build that for part of this cultural thing that Paul was talking about a minute ago.

If you’ve got a place you can go and let’s say you’re not some ultra rich person that can afford a hunting camp or our own lake or something, you’ve got a place where you can take your family that really solidifies your relationship with the earth and with Mississippi.

(Will) I agree.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) So, we need to have that. And I’m bound and determined that we’re going to fix some of our parks. We’re looking at some match money and some other things that may be able to double that to where we can spend about eighty million this next year.

(Will) I certainly appreciate that.

(Paul) That is good to hear. Governor, we’ve just got one more question for you. You know, what’s the best way for constituents for Mississippians to contact you?

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Call Tom King or

(Paul) I love it.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) You know Brad White, you know Willie Simmons any of the leak. I mean John Caldwell; his wife Lee is a county supervisor so you can call any of those and they will call me right after you get through whatever complaint. Now if it’s something congratulatory you can call me at the office.

(Will) Okay.

(Paul) Perfect. Perfect. That’s the best answer we’ve got on that.

Well, Governor, we really appreciate you stopping by to talk to us today especially you know we’re recording this just a day after Sine Die. So, we do before we get out of here, we’re gonna pat ourselves on the back. The Public Relations Association of Mississippi just awarded the podcast The Extra Mile an award of excellence, so you know, thanks to everybody that’s involved here at MDOT. And then thank you to the listeners.

(Lt. Governor Hosemann) Congratulations. That’s really helps. Next, you’ll be on ESPN.

(Paul) Right. Absolutely. Well, thanks again, Governor for being here. And we’ll just we’ll just wrap things up. Again, thank our listeners out there for tuning in to The Extra Mile podcast. We want to thank our producer Katey Hornsby, our editor Drew Hall. Remember you can listen and watch each episode by visiting GoMDOT.com/TheExtraMile and also be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. All the things we talked about today we like to update you @MississippiDOT is the handle. And as always remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.