Business, economics, and what is coming next in Jackson.
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City Hall, the county, the Capitol, and the money behind the votes.
Jackson voters decide Nov. 3 whether to raise the prepared-food tax to 1.5% and the lodging tax to 2%, with the money dedicated to Visit Jackson. The resolution and the certified ballot language are now on the record.
Mississippi Today has described the five-story Cancer Center and Research Institute as located on State Street across from the medical center, with construction starting in late October and an opening about four years out. No plan the Wire could find includes retail. Here is everything on the record about the building, the money, and the land.
The state imploded the 50-year-old Department of Public Safety headquarters at I-55 and Woodrow Wilson Avenue on Sunday morning. It has announced no plan for the land. Nearby, UMMC’s $250 million cancer center is about to break ground, and a 60,000-seat stadium’s future is tied to it.
Analysis. A grand jury found no crime to charge. That is not the same as finding that nothing happened. Two pathologists refused to call it a drowning, the state’s own examiner found no water in his airways or stomach, his head carried injuries nobody has explained, and his phone’s data changed while he was missing. Here is what the record says, and what it does not.
Opinion. The city is about to reopen its landfill at prices below what private landfills charge the suburbs. Nobody has said the plan is to become the metro’s cheap dump. But look at what the numbers reward, and ask who benefits when a public asset is sold at a discount.
Absentee voting opened Sept. 21 with a Jackson-only question on the November ballot: a tourism tax to fund the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The county’s own meeting record shows the money is already being counted in the budget cycle.
The agreement runs 25 years with automatic renewals, sets Amazon’s peak-day draw at 82 percent of what all of Ridgeland uses, routes 1.8 million gallons a day of cooling wastewater into Jackson’s West Bank interceptor, pays Amazon back from future developers, and contains no clause about who comes first in a shortage.
The chancellor who stopped House Bill 1020 for eleven days, kept the polls open when Hinds County ran out of ballots, and once lost a Senate seat to the same kind of ballot mess, died Tuesday night. He was on the bench for nearly twenty years.
The moratorium expires in January and the ordinance still is not written. Before the council decides, the case against building server farms in a city that could not deliver clean water four years ago, argued point by point against the industry’s own talking points.
Supervisors closed an $8 million gap on Sept. 10 with a tax increase that generates about $2.3 million a year. The new criminal justice facility is the single largest reason the county says it needs the money.
County supervisors hold the tax exemptions and zoning votes that decide where Mississippi’s data centers land. On Sept. 15 and 16, they get their first formal briefing on the industry, and the agenda shows who is doing the talking.
Jackson’s police chief told the City Council her department has treated the case as a homicide since Day 1. Four weeks after the autopsy, the family still has no written cause of death, because that document is issued by a state agency the city does not control.
A 30-page financial plan filed in federal court proposes Jackson sell its water and sewer assets to a new, city-independent authority. The document’s own tables show what that buys: smaller rate increases, and a bond that only works if the city gives up control.
Marcus Chanay starts Sept. 14 as Mayor John Horhn’s third chief of staff since July 2025, landing in an office that is also losing its chief administrative officer at the end of the month.
The council’s 6-1 vote on Aug. 25 marks a shift for JXN Water’s fiercest critic, who once demanded the city retake the system outright. Now he wants Jackson in the room when the transition plan is written.
Chief U.S. District Judge Halil Ozerden gave the disbarred former DA 30 days to show why he should keep practicing in federal court. That clock runs out around Sept. 3, six weeks before all three defendants are sentenced.
The council paused data center construction for 183 days in July, then voted in August to explore sites anyway. The clock runs out in January, and the city’s zoning code still has no definition for a data center.
The council has now met on the budget four times in nine days. Thursday’s special public hearing comes one day after the regular meeting where the spending plan was expected to go to a vote.
Three years apart, the two most magnetic coaches in the state walked away from its Black flagship and its white one, each at the peak of what he built. The departures look like opposites. They are the same story, and it is not really about football.
After two finance committee hearings and a special session, the council faces a regular meeting Tuesday to adopt a budget that is 16.8% smaller than last year’s. The calendar shows how compressed the process has become.
Mayor John Horhn pitched a $112.9 million general fund budget as flat for fiscal 2027. It is $23 million below the current year’s adopted budget, and two council members are questioning whether the revenue it counts on will actually arrive.
Zach Servis finished third in the 2025 mayoral race with 2.5 percent of the vote. Now his federal lawsuit over a campaign shirt and a city ordinance is forcing Jackson to defend how it lets residents speak at council meetings.
RaSean Thomas told the Finance Committee Thursday that $1.68 million would add 25 personnel this year, the first step toward 75 new hires by the end of Mayor John Horhn’s term. The math starts with a staffing gap the state flagged in May.
The joint committee that will redraw Mississippi’s legislative, congressional and Supreme Court maps holds its first public hearing Aug. 18. Voting-rights advocates say the process is starting without a single draft map, and they want to know why.
Mayor Horhn’s $112.9 million general fund proposal holds spending flat, but two revenue lines drew sharp questions from the council’s finance committee on Monday.
Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes is pushing to dissolve the Planning and Development Department and hand code enforcement to police. The city’s top cop, who would inherit the job, opposes the move.
A 3-4 vote and a withdrawn motion leave the city’s books showing a $135 million budget against roughly $99 million in projected revenue, with the CFO warning of audit findings and personal liability.
The former Hinds County district attorney cannot practice law in Mississippi again. The court’s order was both immediate and permanent, an unusual departure from the state’s normal 30-day grace period.
Ward Three Councilman Kenneth Stokes wants to dissolve the city’s Planning and Development Department and move most of its divisions under the Jackson Police Department. The council deferred the ordinance to committee.
The 3-4 vote leaves the city’s books out of compliance with state law. The council recessed until Friday, when the amendment could resurface.
Chief Brackney’s calendar reveals city officials met with the camera manufacturer whose hardware was specified in the contract more than two months before the emergency was declared, undercutting the city’s justification for bypassing competitive bidding.
The council selected a new leader at its July meeting, a shift that comes as the body navigates the aftermath of Jackson’s first data center moratorium and ongoing tension with the mayor’s office.
Mayor John Horhn told WLBT on Monday that talks about a data center at the Lake Hico site are “very premature,” walking back records showing his administration quietly planned the hub for months. Separately, a federal judge has raised concerns about what the project could mean for JXN Water.
Brad McCullouch, appointed to replace Jody Owens after his federal guilty plea, invited Shad White to audit the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office. Owens separately moved to surrender his law license.
Internal documents obtained by WLBT reveal the city eyed a $5 billion to $15 billion hyperscale data center at the former Rex Brown plant site, projecting $9 million to $20 million a year in new revenue. The council passed a moratorium on data centers two days before the records came out.
The former councilman turned down a government offer that required cooperation with prosecutors. His two co-defendants also pleaded guilty without cooperating.
The special election that was supposed to happen July 14 was canceled by Governor Reeves the day before. Now Archie’s attorney is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to fast-track the case, arguing every month of delay extends the harm of a voided election.
The City Council will vote Tuesday on applying for a competitive federal grant that would award Jackson up to $300 million for public safety, technology, and crime reduction. Only two to four cities nationwide are expected to win.
The former mayor’s signed plea agreement, filed in federal court July 6, surrenders his rights to appeal, to FOIA records, and to control his assets. A probation officer has now been assigned to build the pre-sentence report that will shape all three sentencings on October 15.
The Planning and Economic Development Committee reviewed a draft regulatory framework Monday afternoon. The full council took up a six-month moratorium that night. No vote was taken, but the path forward is clearer than it was.
The Jackson bribery case now moves to the only courtroom fight left: punishment. A person-by-person guide to the exposure, the guidelines math, the cooperation credit, and the order in which the bills come due.
The Mississippi Bar asked the state Supreme Court on July 6 to suspend Jody Owens from practicing law, the near-automatic consequence of his felony plea. The harder problem arrives later: six years of Hinds County convictions won by an office whose leader was committing federal crimes while running it.
Hours after Lumumba folded, the last defendant did too. The biggest corruption case in the city’s modern history is over: one mayor, one district attorney, one council president, one councilwoman, one associate, all guilty by their own word. What remains is the sentencing calendar, and the questions no jury will ever answer.
The former mayor, twice elected and the heir to a movement, has changed his plea in the federal bribery case. Seven days before opening statements, only Aaron Banks still says he is innocent.
Chief Administrative Officer Pieter Teeuwissen is stepping down after less than a year on the job, citing personal obligations. His departure comes as the city faces a budget shortfall, a data center fight, and the fallout from Jody Owens’s guilty plea.
The council will consider a temporary ban on new data center development at a 6 p.m. public hearing Monday, following a committee discussion at 4 p.m. Both meetings are at City Hall.
Lumumba has called his indictment a political prosecution timed to destroy him. In a city that watched the state take its airport, its courts, and its water, that theory did not come from nowhere. An examination of the case his defenders make, and where it collides with the record.
The former mayor loses the cover of a co-defendant’s entrapment fight and gains a star witness against him. Banks loses the same cover and may be better off without it. A strategic map of the trial that opens July 13.
After a standing-room-only public hearing where 25 of 26 speakers opposed data centers, the Jackson City Council is drafting regulations that will determine whether Saxum’s 230-acre rezoning moves forward. The next vote is July 14.
After seven days of testimony and nearly four hours of closing arguments, the decade-old fight over Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport now rests with one man. A ruling could take months.
Between July 11 and July 14, the capital city faces a new district attorney, a federal corruption trial, a court-ordered election do-over, and a possible transit strike. None of these deadlines was planned. All of them are about the same thing.
First Assistant DA Brad McCullouch is holding the office while Governor Tate Reeves decides who gets it. Under state law, Reeves has 10 days to make an emergency appointment and must call a special election. The politics here are not simple.
Document 205, filed June 29, reveals an asset freeze, a full waiver of all appeal rights, and a sealed supplement that almost certainly contains the cooperation terms. The fine print tells a story the courtroom summary did not.
Jody Owens brought Gary Kohlman, one of Washington’s most decorated trial lawyers, to lead the defense. Legal observers expected the other two defendants to ride in his wake. Owens is gone. The question is what his departure leaves behind.
Jody Owens admitted Monday he funneled more than $80,000 in FBI cash to the mayor and a city councilman. He resigned as Hinds County DA effective Wednesday. Lumumba and Banks go to trial July 13.
The former Hinds County DA faces conspiracy, money laundering, and honest services fraud. Federal guidelines point to 2 to 3.5 years. One question will determine whether he gets less.
The former Jackson City Council president just dropped a legal bombshell on prosecutors, arguing they illegally crammed multiple separate crimes into a single count. His lawyers want the judge to make the government show its hand before trial.
Judge Jordan held the final pretrial conference June 16, then a separate in-chambers session the same day. By the end of it, the defendants had a bigger strike sheet, a tighter deadline stack, and an order to start drafting anonymous-jury instructions.
When the federal corruption trial of Jody Owens, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and Aaron Banks opens July 13, the courtroom is open to the public. No ticket, no press pass. A reader’s guide to getting in.
A city that begged the federal government for drinking water in 2022 is being courted to host the thirstiest machines in America.
A plain-language guide to the federal bribery trial of DA Jody Owens, former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and former Councilman Aaron Banks. The arguments, the witnesses, and what to listen for in opening statements.
The corruption case has been quieter on the docket than in the headlines. The last two weeks changed that. Twenty-eight days from trial, the pretrial motions are picking up.
A rezoning brawl over 230 acres in northwest Jackson has the protests and the deadline. But a separate developer’s off-grid gas plant — the project state regulators just declined to touch — may set the precedent that lasts.
After months arguing that pretrial publicity had poisoned the local jury pool, federal prosecutors told the court last week they are satisfied a fair jury can be seated in Jackson — quietly ending the last skirmish before the corruption trial of Jody Owens, Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Aaron Banks.
The city convened a panel at Jackson State to ask whether it wants a 230-acre data center in northwest Jackson — a question it has not answered, with a rezoning vote now days away.
A month before the July 13 trial, prosecutors withdrew their bid to move the case to Gulfport or widen the jury pool — telling the court they are satisfied a fair jury can be seated in Jackson.
Special Judge Barry Ford couldn’t find the will of the voters in the boxes, so he ordered a new election between David Archie and Anthony Smith. The ballots reopen the same week the federal bribery trial begins downtown.
Warren Gary Kohlman has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, served as general counsel to the National Basketball Players Association, and once defended a congressman caught in the FBI’s ABSCAM sting. Now he is in Jackson, defending the district attorney.
A federal judge let the new Metro Jackson Water Authority seat a board and do almost nothing else, keeping the city’s water and sewer systems under his own control for now.
The federal corruption case against Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and former Councilman Aaron Banks moved another inch toward the jury this week. The inches are starting to add up.
Three Jackson officials, three different indictments. The numbers aren’t an accident.
An analysis: of the three men headed to trial in Jackson’s biggest corruption case, Aaron Banks has always been the quiet one — and the quiet may be calculated.
An essay: for twenty years Jackson couldn’t give away a downtown lot — and when investors finally arrived with a private jet and a yacht, they turned out to be the FBI.
For readers who want to understand Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s case: of the three men charged, his alleged crime is the thinnest — and his defense the most purely legal.
Why the defense sees an opening: the judge denied the motion to dismiss, but kept Owens’s entrapment defense alive and left the central legal question for the jury.
A New Jersey firm wants to rezone 190 acres for what looks like a data center, just as the City Council weighs a moratorium — part of a boom that’s made Mississippi one of the country’s hottest markets.
As the Jackson corruption case heads toward trial, here’s what the headlines won’t tell you about how it will actually unfold.
An updated chronology of United States v. Owens — from the FBI’s 2022 tip through the July 13 trial date, with the jury and venue fight in focus.
How Mississippi already mastered the gerrymander everyone’s suddenly talking about.