WCBI NEWS AT TEN - MAY 1, 2020

WCBI NEWS AT TEN - MAY 1, 2020

A political tug-of- war is shaping up as state leaders figure out next steps in the response to covid- 19.

The questions today all revolve around who has spending authority for the 1.25 billion dollars of federal cares act money in mississippi.

Courtney ann jackson has the latest..

Masked, socially distanced and ready to take on the question of who holds the purse strings---lt.

Governor delbert hosemann and speaker philip gunn laid out their case friday morning.

Hosemann: "the state of mississippi appropriations, at least since 1890 have been done by the legislature.

174 people who are responsible, transparent and elected by the people."

Gunn: "the governor says by letting him spent the money he can get it where it needs to go more quickly.

That makes for a good soundbite but what voice does that give the citizens in that decision making process?

Who speaks for the citizens in that process?"

They both made this note.

Gunn: "we hold governor reeves in high regard.

What we do today is not personal."

Hours later while the legislature wrapped up its business---the governor weighed in during his daily briefing.

"i think they really believe this is about internal politics.

Who has the power?

Is it legislative versus executive?

I don't think they're bad people.

I really just don't think they realize the damage this would do."

Reeves has repeatedly maintained in recent days that his interpretation of the state law and the precedent is that the governor has the spending authority.

He says the legislative process is a good one but in situations like this---it would tie his hands and keep money from those who need it.

"best case scenario, they overestimate and we send a whole lot of money back to the federal government when it goes unused.

Worst case scenario, they underestimate and people die because we can't get them what they need."

Reeves raising this question about the legislature's return.

"if the law says that i can't do it, then why are we changing the law?"

- caj wcbi news the bill now goes to the governor, if he vetoes it, it's back to the legislature..

The mississippi department of health is reporting 397 new cases of covid-19 today.

The new positives bring the state's total to over 72- hundred cases.

20 new deaths are also being reported.

There are a total of 281 coronavirus deaths statewide.

11 of the deaths reported today occurred between march 29 and april 16, and are based on death certificate investigations.

The health department estimates about 34- hundred people have recovered from the virus.

Over 71-thousand mississippians have been tested for covid-19.

State health officer dr. thomas dobbs sent out a warning to mississippians today.

This is far from over.

I want everyone to just stay vigilant because this thing is not even remotely toward the end as far as the number of people getting sick" doctor dobbs encourages people to shelter at home if they're able.

He added that the risk wasn't any less than what it was three weeks ago.

There have been a lot of changes regarding mississippi's reopening.

In addition to regulations for the state, there are also local rules for individual cities.

Stephanie poole has more on what columbus city leaders are trying to do to keep people healthy and safe.

The pandemic isn't over just yet.

And columbus city leaders are reminding citizens of the rules in place.

" the city council passed a resolution the other day that requires employees with business that are open to the public to ensure that their employees are masked.

We did not pass the resolution requiring customers to wear masks."

City attorney jeff turnage says even with businesses required to cover up, citizens should still protect themselves when out in public.

The city's curfew is another concern.the council implemented a new a curfew from 10pm-6am.

Only essential travel and activities are permitted between those hours.

" the police department has been very kind to people thus far and but they have the authority to issue citations up to 1-thousand dollars for chronic violators of people who did not comply.we don't want to do that but we don't want people to get infected and die either.

It's not a hard citation for people who are knowingly placing people at risk after being told not to."

Gloria herriot owns hollyhocks in downtown columbus.

She's urging community members to abide by the rules, so she can keep her doors open and hopefully flatten the curve.

" we want to be able to leave our homes, we want to get our lives back.

For me, that means opening hollyhocks so this is our first day and we are thrilled but it is important to be smart and if wearing a mask is what it takes then i'm willing.

Most of the small businesses are really hurting and fortunately we've been around a long time and so we've had a little bit put away to get us through."

Butt sots " we should be strictly enforcing those guidelines among ourselves and not relying on the police department to do that."

Wcbi has learned columbus mayor robert smith will be announcing a "restart columbus committee".

The committee will develop three- step recommendations to allow businesses to reopen to the public as allowed by the state and federal guidelines.

First look stinger summary: the first weekend of may is going to look and feel more like the first weekend of summer!

Temperatures will warm into the 80s through the weekend and early next week.

Our next best chance for any showers or storms looks to be tuesday into tuesday night.

Friday night: clear, calm, and quiet.

Lows in the 50s.

Saturday: sunny and warm.

Highs in the low to mid 80s.

Winds sw 5-15 mph.

Take vo in monitor yesterday we brought you an exclusive interview with kennedy brewer, who's wrongful conviction is highlighted in a new netflix series called-- the innocence files.

Tonight we're hearing from the people who helped put the documentary together.... our quentin smith speaks with one of the producers and has more on why they say it's important to share these kinds of stories... nat it's now a popular show on netflix..... the innocence files focuses on individuals who've been wrongfully convicted.

Two of them - levon brooks and kennedy brewer, are both from noxubee county..

Their stories became a passion project for the same group that helped them regain their freedom.

" the idea was to kind of do a broad look at the problems in our justice system.

It's broken down into different segments about the court system and the court process, but ours focused on just the evidence and looking at mis- applied forensic evidence."

Lauren fulton served as the field producer for the project... she spent eight months in mississippi gathering archive footage, court records, and interviewing those involved with the cases to give an in- depth look at what happened.

" we were just amazed once we got to mississippi how much was preserved and how much was assessable.

To get all of those materials and to be able to have access to these characters, it really helped bring our story to life."

For fulton, this project took her on a personal journey.

The two cases happened less than thirty miles from where she grew up... " you rarely work on projects that take you home.

I was the same age as both the victims courtney and christine growing up."

Growing up, she didn't know about the crimes or wrongful convictions that had taken place.

But by the end of the project, she gained two new friends and a deeper appreciation of how the men were able to overcome all of the adversity that came their way.

"every day and every experience for them is a gift after you go through something like that, and to be able to document even a part of that was a huge honor."

Fulton hopes the eight part documentary will shine a light on others who are wrongfully convicted, and ultimately lead to their freedom.

"it's not only levon and kennedy, but so many people are like them and it's our hope that by telling the stories it will shine a light on the flaws of the justice system and actually provoke people to act and to make a change."

Take vo in monitor the innocence project released this documentary in april.

Fulton says they hope to make a second series to this project... but those plans haven't been finalized.

Stinger wx summary: the first weekend of may is going to look and feel more like the first weekend of summer!

Temperatures will warm into the 80s through the weekend and early next week.

Our next best chance for any showers or storms looks to be tuesday into tuesday night.

Friday night: clear, calm, and quiet.

Lows in the 50s.

Saturday: sunny and warm.

Highs in the low to mid 80s.

Winds sw 5-15 mph.

Saturday night: mostly clear.

Lows in the mid to upper 50s.

Sunday: mostly sunny to partly cloudy.

Highs in the mid 80s.

Sunday night: partly cloudy.

Lows in the 60s.

Monday: partly cloudy.

Highs in the mid to upper 80s.

Monday night: partly cloudy.

Lows in the 60s.

Tuesday: a 30% chance of showers and storms. highs in the 80s.

Wednesday- thursday: mostly sunny to partly cloudy.

Highs in the 70s.

Lows fall back into the 50s and 40s.

Follow @wcbiweather on facebook, twitter, instagram, and the wcbi news app summary: the first weekend of may is going to look and feel more like the first weekend of summer!

Temperatures will warm into the 80s through the weekend and early next week.

Our next best chance for any showers or storms looks to be tuesday into tuesday night.

Friday night: clear, calm, and quiet.

Lows in the 50s.

Saturday: sunny and warm.

Highs in the low to mid 80s.

Winds sw 5-15 mph.

Saturday night: mostly clear.

Lows in the mid to upper 50s.

Sunday: mostly sunny to partly .

Highs in the mid 80s.

Sunday night: partly cloudy.

Lows in the 60s.

Monday: partly cloudy.

Highs in the mid to upper 80s.

The days are longer.

And, warmer.

And many people thinking about planting a garden.

That may sound overwhelming.

But our own resident gardener eric lampkin makes it look so easy and fun.

Eric lampkin: i'm eric lampkin.

At night, i'm the six and ten producer, but during the day you will usually find me out here in my garden.

I'm here to introduce you to one of the easiest things in the world.

People think gardening is hard.

It's not.

This is what i call the "gateway drug" to gardening.

It's nothing but a couple of bags of soil, some seeds and water.

You're good to go.

Now here you'll see on either side of me, these are what i call my "salad bars".

It's a mixture of lettuce and other salad green.

I set these up just to basically keep the bags of soil off the ground.

What i'm going to show you today is how to do this and a couple of different options on how to do it.

I'll show you how.

Eric lampkin: all right, so this is the new salad bar.

You might say the third generation.

I built this basically using some scrap one by four i had lying around, chicken wire, a few screws.

I got it set up on sawhorses.

What we're going to do, the easiest thing, i've got two 50 pound bags of soil.

I got these at the co-op.

So, we've got a box, we've got potting soil.

The next thing you need's a knife.

Pretty simple operation.

You'll want to do this all the way end to end.

Basically, what you want to do is a little slit down the middle.

When it's all said and done, we will actually cut this piece of flap away.

You got your dirt up here.

Do this on both bags, obviously.

Eric lampkin: all right, we've got some pretty black soil here.

It's going to be good.

You want to kind of move this to the edges a little bit, fan it out a little bit.

Get it even, as even as you can.

I'm just kind of getting this out, kind of banking it up a little bit in the ends.

That way, when it starts to really rain, you don't get all your soil washing down to the sides.

You'll have a little bank along the edge here.

I'll take my little garden knife here, and i'm going to make a little easy furrows.

You want to do it shallow.

Actually, lettuce seed only has to be about a quarter inch deep.

That's why it does so well in these bags like this.

Eric lampkin: the other thing about lettuce seed, it's really small.

Lettuce seed is tiny, so a little bit of it goes a long way, and a lot of it goes a real long way.

We're just kind of sprinkling.

You probably won't even be able to see this, and i'm probably sowing a little heavy here, but that's why you thin things out.

So, we've got the seeds in.

Hopefully they're kind of evenly spaced.

All that's left now is cover them up a little bit.

We're going to give it a good soaking with the garden hose.

If you don't have a garden hose, you can use a watering can, tea kettle, whatever you got.

It doesn't make that much difference, just so long as you give it a good soak in the first go around, and get it down there.

Give it a chance to germinate.

As warm as it's been, it should be pretty easy to germinate right now.

Eric lampkin: i forgot one thing, and this is very important, no matter how you set these up, you have to have drain holes in the bottom of your bag for the water to drain.

I've already watered this.

I've already soaked it in good.

This is the last step.

All right, this is pretty easy.

All you need is your handy dandy knife, and you don't have to have any sort of set pattern.

You just want to cut several little slits in the bottom of your bags of soil to give it some room to drain.

Eric lampkin: there you have it.

Pretty simple stuff.

Hopefully in the next few weeks, these beds are going to look like those beds over there.

You'll be seeing a little green stuff popping up, and you'll have your simple garden.

And, some good salads too.

Hey folks, if i can do this, you can do this.

Take vo off top and if you're curious how that project turned out... eric tells me they shot that segment about 10 days ago, and this is what the salad bar looked like this morning..

He figures in another 30 days or so he should be cutting fresh lettuce.

Stinger after a quarter century in the dugout, an area baseball coach is hanging up his cleats..

Courtney takes a look back at his career when we come take pkg it was 26 years ago that lewis earnest took the head baseball coaching position at hamilton.

However, now he's ready to begin a new chapter: retirement.

"you never really know when is right.

I don't know if now is right necessarily."

Six state titles.

That's how hamilton will remember coach earnest.

He was the first to bring the hardware home after winning the 1997 1a baseball state championship.

Later, earnest added two more trophies to the display case in 1999 and 2001, as well as three slow-pitch softball titles in 2004, 2009, and 2012.

"they're all special in a certain way.

Of course, the first one is special because it's the first.

There was something different about every one of them; big plays and different kids."

Nearly 23 years later, earnest remembers his first title like it was yesterday.

"we played natchez- cathedral.

They were 24-0 when we went down there and when we got back here, after playing them, they were 24-2.

We won those two and won it all.

I remember the fans coming over the outfield wall.

Back then, you played championships on your home field."

However, it's not the championships that earnest says he's going to miss the most.

His toughest goodbye will be to the baseball field.

"there wasn't much of anything here when i started.

Everything here has my fingerprint on it and one way or another i built it.

This one and the softball field.

It's special to me.

I've told people it's kind of like my baby."

Although earnest may no longer be the man in charge, he says he doesn't plan on staying away from the baseball field he calls home.

"thank you for a great opportunity, and for a great career.

I'm going to miss everything about it.

I'm still going to be down here a lot, but i'm going to miss it."

Hamilton baseball now begins a new era as six-year assistant coach dallas flippo takes over the program.

Reporting in hamilton, courtney robb wcbi sports.

Off we love a feel good friday story// if you live in starkville you probably know jeremiah chandler.

He's a manager for almost every sport at starkville high school.

He spent the evening saying hello to folks from his home.

And in full jacket style...many from the starkville school district drove by to say hi..some had balloons they gave out.

Just an old fashion drive by hello.