MDOT presents The Extra Mile Podcast legislative session.

(Paul) Welcome in to another edition of The Extra Mile Podcast Legislative Session. I’m Paul Katool MDOT Digital Media Manager and as always, I’m joined by my co-host Will Craft. He handles government and constituent affairs here at the agency. And really, we’re gonna do a couple different things today. I’m gonna talk to Will and get kind of an update on the legislative session as it pertains to MDOT and we’ve also got Chief Engineer and Deputy Executive Director of MDOT Brian Ratliff. He is here to talk a little I-20 closure. A little SEC Squared and we’re not talking, we’re not talking football here, maybe some other things. So, let’s just go ahead and jump into this.

Will, you know, we are really tying up the 2022 session. So, can you just go through kind of the legislation that’s out there that’s affecting the agency and give us an update?

(Will) Absolutely. You know, there’s been a lot going on this session. They’ve had all kinds of different measures and topics throughout the session. Everything. Medicare, Medicaid, we’ve got the income tax that’s come through. They had medicinal cannabis coming through, the largest teacher pay raise in the state’s history. So, there’s been all kind of you know great big projects going on. The feds as you guys are aware you know passed the big IIJA Infrastructure bill so there’s new funding tied to that. Certainly, played an impact on this session you know things like match money and how can we make all those dollars go the furthest and how to best serve the state, utilizing those state funds and the federal funds.

There’s been all kind of things related to the appropriation cycle. You’ve got ARPA money that’s come through that everybody’s getting a little piece of. They’re still working out the details. Interestingly enough you know as Paul, you just mentioned, we’re wrapping up here getting to the end of the session, but it’s been kind of crazy the last couple weeks. Even this last week there were some deadlines that came up that were not quite met and so the legislature had to think out of the box a little bit and extend the session for about a week. So, Sine Die actually seven days away from this time. We’re getting there, but we got a little extra week tied on the end there. So, the folks over there are working on the appropriations bill right now. We’re hearing good things.

Obviously, there’s one thing I wanted on thing I wanted to mention too. So, we’re recording this on a Friday. Sunday night, this coming Sunday, two days from now, the legislative budget office staff is set to have all the appropriations bills ready and the conferees are going to come up here on Sunday night at five o’clock to get those signed. So hopefully Monday we’ll be able to see everything in our appropriations bill and it’ll be flush with cash and all ready to go for us. I know obviously Brad White our director has been working really hard and very close with all the legislators over there.

But I got to give a shout out to my counterpart upstairs as well Parks McNabb. He does a lot of work maybe more than me. Late into the legislative process he’s been a big help. And then certainly all the guys here, guys and girls here in the Public Affairs staff taking care of the podcast and trying to keep it straight each week.

But two things I wanted to mention for sure is some of the things that maybe did not quite make it through the session. One of those we had talked about a couple of weeks ago. I guess maybe a couple of months ago now. Time flies.

(Paul) It really does.

(Will) The litter you know, there were some monies, they were trying to get extra money to us to do some litter cleanup, pick up. That did not make it through, but I have no fear the effort will still be there to try and keep the roadways cleaned up in any way that you guys can encourage a friend or family member to keep the litter in the car, find a trash can. We appreciate that for sure.

We spend a lot of time each session, this is something Judy Martin and others would lose sleep overnight. I’m sure they don’t even want to hear this, but we spend a lot of time each session working through our federal regulations on DUI’s and CDL’s. We’ve got a lot of minimum requirements that the feds impose that we’ve got to keep in check, keep in compliance with. That’s the word we hear all the time, compliance and non-compliance. If we don’t have these certain things in measure here in law, we can get out of compliance with the feds, and it can cost us a pretty penny.

One that it’s a perennial issue here is the open container law. We lose a little bit of money on that. But you know, there’s certain rules in place when you have that CDL that the feds keep us beholden to and every year it seems to be some effort to make some changes along those and it ends up taking a lot of time. But successfully I think this year so far so good. Obviously, we’ve got seven days left, but we think everything is good to go so we’re going to come out this year fully compliant which is a great thing.

I don’t think in my time here that we have had that actually. We seem to always have one or two issues that we have to work on the follow-up session to get our compliance stuff in order. What else, Paul? What am I missing?

(Paul) Well, let’s see. That’s a lot of great information. We got something big we want to talk about ERBRF. That’s Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund. It’s been a great thing for roads and bridges in Mississippi. So, let’s talk about the next iteration about that kind of what’s coming next.

(Will) That’s right. I know I’ve been getting hit up by folks already. Brian, I’m sure you have too. Folks asking when can we apply for those funds and when can we start getting a piece of that pie? Hopefully soon. We are obviously that conversation’s going on right now. We’ve heard numbers everywhere from 50 million up to 350 million. So obviously it will be somewhere in between there. We’re confident though that’s going to be at least one hundred million. Seems all the conversations are at least that hundred million number. Obviously certainly be higher. But we don’t think it will be any lower than that. And that program’s just been such a great help for not only MDOT, but I know the locals out there appreciate that anytime you have some extra money that you can tap into because you know by and large infrastructure is an issue for everyone everywhere in the whole state and the country obviously.

But you know the funds just seem to go a little bit further on some of these local projects maybe because they’re smaller that dollar just able to stretch a little further. So, we’re hoping yeah hoping to get some good news on that. We’ll know obviously more about that on Monday. What else, Paul?

(Paul) Excellent. Excellent. Yes. We will continue to update everyone on ERBRF. So, let’s hit one more topic with you, Will. The gas tax holiday? What happened with that?

(Will) Oh yeah. That’s right. That was a big thing going on there. Everybody was you know gas is ridiculously high. I get it. I filled up my wife’s car yesterday. I almost had a heart attack. Apparently, her gas tank’s a lot larger than mine. I didn’t realize that before, but I know now. And I think you know, I myself tend to budget about three hundred bucks a month on gas. And I have blown that out of the water the last couple of weeks or last couple of months. But you know that was something that the leadership over there was talking about it, but it did not come through. I think that you know for whatever reason they thought maybe there was a better way to assist folks and hopefully that is reflected in the income tax they passed.

You know, there’s some great cuts going on and they assure us that you know, we’ll see some lots more of our paychecks and whatnot sticking with us. So, that’ll go a lot further especially when folks are out there again buying that high dollar gas. But no gas tax holiday. That is not going to happen this time around. That’s right.

(Paul) Good deal. Good deal. Well, Will, thank you for updating us all on legislation that is affecting MDOT. And let’s, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover today so, let’s jump into the next thing. We have Chief Engineer, Deputy Executive Director Brian Ratliff with us today.

(Will) The Chief.

(Paul) The Chief. Yes Indeed. And so, we’ve got something big to talk about. We’ve got a closure on I-20 westbound, I-55 in Jackson coming up starting April 8. It’s expected to last 72 hours. And this is for an emergency repair on a dip in the roadway. So, what exactly caused that dip in the roadway?

(Brian Ratliff) Well, appreciate y’ all having me on today. We noticed a dip coming in the roadway on I-20 westbound just west of the Pearl River back around Thanksgiving last year and MDOT maintenance forces went out and tried to re-level the concrete slab that had you know fell down a little bit and tried to use some foam to re-level that piece of roadway and it held for a little while. And you know, we’ve been watching it and monitoring it. And it’s gotten to the point where we feel like we need to go in and make a temporary repair to allow us to gather some information to see what we need to do to make our permanent reconstruction or repair that section of roadway.

(Paul) That makes sense.

(Will) Can you walk us through that? How does that work get performed during the closure period? How’s that going?

(Brian Ratliff) Yeah. So, like Paul said, we’ll start at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 8. You know, MDOT will do a lot of this work with our own employees and our own equipment. We did hire a contractor to come in and saw cut that concrete and they’re gonna break it up for us, but then pretty much after that MDOT will be doing that with our own forces. During that point in time when the roadway is closed, we did hire a consulting engineering firm that’s going to come out and do soil warnings to get geotechnical information to make the permanent repair.

(Paul) Good deal. So, can tell us what would happen if these repairs weren’t done? Why is it so important to make this repair now?

(Brian Ratliff) Well, like say, it’s getting to be a pretty big dip out there. And you know, we’ve got car haulers, you know hauling cars, you know across that thing. Of course, you know that roadway has about a 100,000 plus cars through that section. And you know, we’re seeing a lot of things laying on the back of trailers that people don’t tie down, you know properly. They tend to fly off and cause hazards in the roadway and you know, may could cause an accident. So, we just feel like you know, a temporary repair with some asphalt out there where if it sinks a little bit, we’re able to come in and add some more you know, if it shoves up a little bit, we’ll be able to come in and cut it off with a milling machine and make it a smooth ride until we can get the permanent repair plans you know ready to go.

(Paul) Excellent.

(Will) Where’s that detour going to go?

(Brian Ratliff) Well, I-20 westbound will basically be closed at I-55 north. So, if you’re coming 20 westbound say from Brandon where I live or Meridian, you’ll need to, you’ll be detoured to go to I-55 northbound to I-220 and back around to I-20 west.

(Will) Okay.

(Paul) Excellent. And can you just reiterate the you know, the corridors that you know are going to be affected? All the areas that will be affected.

(Brian Ratliff) Yeah.

(Paul) Just want to repeat that because we want to make sure people know.

(Bill Ratliff) Again I-20 westbound basically from I-55 north between I fifty-five and Gallatin Street will be closed. The detour route again will be I twenty westbound to I fifty-five north to I two twenty back to I twenty west. And you know, just tell people out there that look you need to make arrangements to add a little more time to your commute. You know, we’re doing this over the weekend. You know, we’re going to work 24/7 around the clock until we can get this done. We intend to open the roadway sometime Sunday night. But obviously if the work goes better than planned, as soon as we can open that roadway up, we’re gonna get it back open.

(Will) Does all the rain we’ve had over the last couple of days in fact

(Brian Ratliff) Man, you know, we got, we got Jackson State to come out with their ground penetrating radar and that roadway embankment is really, really saturated.

(Will) I bet.

(Brian Ratliff) So, what we’re gonna do is probably dig down about five, six feet, put in some crushed stone to be able to drain some water out of there and put about a foot of asphalt on it and open the roadway back to the traveling public. Now that sounds easy, but it’s really not that easy.

(Will) It doesn’t sound easy to me.

(Brian Ratliff) You know, it takes a lot of skilled operators. And I will say, you know, I was a District 5 engineer, the district, you know, Jackson is in District 5. And we have a lot of good quality people that really know what they’re doing on this equipment, and I wish them the best. I’ll be out there with them to show them support and you know, if I got to grab a shovel, I’m grabbing the shovel too.

(Will) There he is.

(Paul) No doubt. It’s all hands-on-deck. And just really one more thing on this. You know, how will the public be updated on all this work?

(Brian Ratliff) Well, you know, through our normal social media stuff. You know, Public Affairs, we’re here today. They do an excellent job of getting the word out to the public and TV stations to get you know, they’re going to be giving updates live on site during the repairs. So, just you know, pay attention to MDOT traffic dot com. You know, our Facebook page or you know, Twitter and all that stuff. Just you know, keep in touch with us and we’ll keep y’ all updated throughout the weekend.

(Paul) Absolutely. People need to, they need to you know, give themselves a little bit of extra time when the repairs are being made, right?

(Brian Ratliff) Absolutely. Like they you know, it’s probably a 15-mile detour, probably 15, 30 more minutes to your commute time over the weekend. If you need to get through that area.

(Paul) Sure. Sure. Well, we appreciate all the information on the closure. And like Brian said, we will continue to update everybody on social media about the latest on that. We just, we want to pivot just a little bit here and talk about SEC Squared. A lot of people might not know about this, but this is a Mississippi State Personnel Board initiative. The way they describe it, it’s the state employee classification and compensation initiative. So how is SEC Squared affecting MDOT?

(Brian Ratliff) Well, it you know, it’s affected MDOT, and you know, we have, we’re one of the largest state agencies you know, in the state of Mississippi. SEC Squared has really impacted MDOT. You know, we’ve been able to adjust some salaries, you know, is it a perfect system? Has it affected every employee we have? No. But you know, for the majority there looks like there’s going to be some hope that we’re able to get our salaries more competitive and like say it was better than the old system that we’ve had in place.

(Will) And for what it’s worth, I mean again you know, dealing with salaries and getting our folks pay right all the issues that we’ve worked on and looked at legislatively, I didn’t even mention this, but getting those numbers and those salaries that things were talking about with SEC Squared, that has been absolutely the number one priority of the director and making sure to get that right because it's you know, obviously when you’re facing the issues we are with salaries and staff it’s you got to get it corrected. He’s obviously been what we think very successful in communicating that message.

(Brian Ratliff) Very, very successful. And having the relationships across the street with the legislators really helped. And he has been very not demanding but he has been very supportive of telling me that that is my number one priority is to make sure that you know, we get these salaries, and you know, where they need to be because he is right. If you don’t have anybody to patch potholes with, I mean they’re not going to get patched. And you don’t have anybody to run the tractor, bush hog you know, they’re not going to be able to cut the grass. And if you don’t pay them, they’re not going to stay. So, he’s been very, very supportive of our people.

(Paul) That’s that’s excellent. Great stuff to hear. So, Will’s go the most important question for you. My mom would be upset if Will didn’t ask this question to Brian.

(Will) Alright, Mr. Ratliff, you spend a lot of time out on the roadways out there driving around. Is there a spot, a dive, a hole in the wall or a fancy, ritzy place, is there a spot anytime you’re coming through, man, I’ve got to pop in here and get a bite to eat?

(Brian Ratliff) Well, it just depends on how much time you have.

(Will) Okay. We’re gonna say unlimited time. You take your leisurely trip wherever you want us.

(Brian Ratliff) Man, if I think I you know, in the Jackson metro area, if I had unlimited time, I would say I would be at Mama Hamil’s.

(Will) Okay.

(Brian Ratliff) I am a true country meal guy.

(Will) Meat and potatoes.

(Brian Ratliff) Meat and potatoes. That’s it.

(Will) I’m right there with you.

(Brian Ratliff) So, if I had to go anywhere in the Jackson metro area unlimited time it would be Mama Hamil’s.

(Will) What about maybe outside the Jackson metro?

(Brian Ratliff) Outside the Jackson metro?

(Will) We’ve had some interesting maybe even back home, right?

(Brian Ratliff) Yeah. You know, when we were over in Yazoo City the other day P-Reaux’s came to mind. You know, not saying the whole you know dive, but I mean it

(Will) No. No. No.

(Brian Ratliff) It didn’t, it really didn’t even have windows in the thing.

(Will) Oh yeah.

(Brian Ratliff) Visqueens around the outsides. But it was just a great atmosphere and very, very good food, had very good catfish.

(Will) That’s right.

(Brian Ratliff) I didn’t get any crawfish.

(Will) I was about to say that’s crawfish place. They roll that you know, they roll those things up, get the breeze going through there without the windows.

(Brian Ratliff) Absolutely.

(Will) Very familiar. My wife’s from Yazoo City. We’ve spent a lot of time there at P-Reaux’s. Yeah. Good crawfish. We’ve had somebody Senator Blackmon last week mentioned crawfish.

(Paul) Oh yes. The season. It’s the season. Tis the season as they say. Well, Brian, we really appreciate all the information. We covered a lot of ground today and before we get out of here, we do have a big announcement. The MDOT podcast The Extra Mile has won best podcast or is among the best podcasts in the country. I’m going to preface that a little bit and say so this is the Government Social Media Conference. They named us one of the five best government in the country.

A lot of hard work goes into it. It’s just not me and Will. And yes, there’s a whole team that makes this happen each week. So, you know, we’re very happy to get this award and it couldn’t happen without the listeners out there. So, we appreciate everyone tuning in. That’s a perfect time to kind of wrap things. Again. Yes.

(Will) And I’m sorry. I just wanted to add one thing. I forgot to mention a couple folks. You know, as again we’re wrapping up the legislative session here. I can’t go through it without mentioning Bonnie and Janet and Byron and all those folks up there and Lisa, Brian. Everybody has such a pivotal role if it’s even if it’s just analyzing a bill here and there or really carrying the water. I mean much like what we’re talking about with the podcast.

There’s a vast team effort that goes into this stuff. I mean at the beginning of the session we were looking at a couple thousand bills to go through as you wind down so just wanted to make sure Drew McWhorter I mean. I’m sure there’s somebody I’m not mentioning here. But big, big thanks to the team. And hopefully guys you got to tune in to get your shout out. So, they got to make sure that they’re listening.

(Paul) Oh no doubt. As Brad says, “State government is a team sport.” It takes a lot of people to make this happen. Yeah. So, we’ll go ahead and wrap things up. And once again just thank all our listeners out there for tuning in to The Extra Mile podcast. We also like we just thanked the, but let’s thank them again, Katey Hornsby, our producer and Drew Hall our editor. They do a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen.

Remember you can listen and watch each episode by visiting GoMDOT.com/TheExtraMile. And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter – @MississippiDOT is the handle there. And as always remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.