Shanda Yates
The city of Jackson’s failing water-sewer system and alarming crime rate are two issues Rep. Shanda Yates plans to concentrate on when the Legislature convenes in January.
“My goal is to focus the next legislative session on tackling and addressing those as best as I can from a state level in conjunction with the city and the county,” said Yates, who represents District 64, which includes Hinds and Madison counties.
Yates began meeting with engineers and other professionals to educate herself about the city’s water-sewer problems after thousands of residents were without water in March due to a historic winter weather event.
“I felt I couldn’t go before the state Legislature and ask for money if I couldn’t tell them what it would cost and how it could be fixed,” said Yates, who was among residents unable to secure drinking water from the tap.
A lawyer, Yates approaches her duties as a legislator as if preparing for a trial. “I wouldn’t be comfortable being any less prepared,” she said.
Major repairs to the city’s water-sewer system will cost more than the federal and state funding the city has received, said Yates, who expects the city will receive additional funds from the federal infrastructure plan.
“I am cautiously optimistic that we can address long-term issues and repairs to the water system,” she said. “It’s an issue for everyone who lives and does business in Jackson.”
When it comes to combatting crime in Jackson, Yates would like to see additional judges in place to handle a backlog of criminal cases.
“Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice (Michael K.) Randolph is in favor of having temporary judges to help handle the backlog of criminal cases,” she said. “The backlog increased as a result of COVID.”
The Legislature would need to make sure funding is in place to pay the judges, she said, noting that the state crime lab also needs additional funding to handle a backlog of cases.
The Jackson Police Department’s real time command center on Riverside Drive needs funding for additional equipment so it can be fully functional and able to track someone across the city and read license plates, which would be useful in the case of an active shooter on the move, Yates said.
“The idea of the real time command center is great, but it’s not fully funded,” she said.
She expects newly elected Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones will help JPD as much as he can, keeping in mind that he is responsible for patrolling all of Hinds County and not just Jackson.
JPD is understaffed, Yates said, and officers often arrest the same people for misdemeanor crimes and must put them back on the street because the city lacks a holding space. “We have to address a holding space,” she said.
Yates expects the Legislature to pass a bill making medical marijuana legal, something that Initiative 65 would have done before it was shot down by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
“The chatter around that has died down quite a bit,” she said. “The speaker, the lieutenant governor and the governor don’t all agree on what the bill should be. With the amount of votes the initiative got, there’s no way we won’t do something.”
The details of redistricting, which involves redrawing the boundaries of legislative and congressional districts so they are equal in population, will consume time during the session, she said.
“If you look at the population for the city of Jackson, there was a deep decline in population,” she said. “My district was the only one that didn’t lose population.
“The city of Jackson is poised to lose a representative. There’s not enough population to divide. How that shakes out at the end of the day, I don’t know. I think my district will stay the same.”
The governor’s proposal to eliminate state income tax and not introduce any tax increases is sure to come up again, Yates said. “Mississippi doesn’t have that much money to eliminate state income tax as a source of revenue,” she said.
The Legislature will have the responsibility of dividing funds from the American Rescue Plan among cities and counties, she said. “I have actively worked with the city of Jackson to get the information I need to help with that,” she said.
Yates expects a bill to be introduced that would privatize the state-run Alcohol Beverage Control warehouse in Gluckstadt. Liquor store owners complain the warehouse needs more funding to hire additional workers and could use more space so it could be operated more efficiently and eliminate a backlog in distributing wine and spirits to stores.
During the 2020 session, Yates introduced a bill that provided Friends of Briarwood Pool, a nonprofit organization that owns and operates the pool located at 570 Reddoch Drive, with an exemption from ad valorem taxes. The most common ad valorem taxes are property taxes levied on real estate.
Friends of Briarwood Pool purchased the pool from an out-of-state lienholder in July 2020 and expected the nonprofit would be eligible for the taxation exemption but discovered that wasn’t the case.
The legislation Yates introduced provides an ad valorem taxation exemption for any swimming pool owned and operated by a nonprofit that allows a public school swim team to use its facilities at no charge and offers its facilities to another nonprofit to conduct water safety and lifeguard training programs.
Never actively involved in politics until she was asked to run for office in 2019, Yates said she did so because she lives in Jackson and she and her husband practice law in Jackson and are raising their son in Jackson.
“I want to be able to tell my son I tried to do something to improve things other than just complain on Facebook,” she said.
During the session from January through March, Yates said her husband takes over some of her legal work as needed so she can devote time to the necessary meetings.
Even when the Legislature isn’t in session, Yates will receive calls from constituents who need help navigating state government or want to bring issues to her attention. “It’s very time consuming being a legislator,” she said.
A graduate of Hinds Community College, the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi College School of Law, Yates is assigned to the Compilation, Revision and Publication Committee, Corrections Committee, Insurance Committee, Judiciary B Committee, Judiciary En Banc Committee and the Transportation Committee.
Yates, who was recalled earlier sessions that were altered in various ways due to the coronavirus, expects the 2022 session to be back to normal.
“The Legislative Page Program is restarting,” she said of the program that gives teens an up-close look at the legislative process “I’ve already had people reach out to me about that.”
