A commissioner at the Mississippi Transportation Commission meeting on Oct. 15, 2025, pressed staff for better data after finding what he said were errors in earlier datasets and calculations that understating differences in road reconditioning between North and South Mississippi.

"For six years, I've been mentioning the North Mississippi is 1,500 miles short of good roads than Southern Mississippi," the commissioner said, adding he had reworked the agency data and found errors such as blank columns, duplicate entries and incomplete 2024 project completions. "I want to see the data. But we got the data. First set of data I got there was a column with a bunch of blanks, so it's not good data if it's not filled out… it had duplicates and triples in it, which made it bad data. So we got the blanks filled in… and it made sense because as I looked at the mileage that was done, there was about 100 more miles of chip seal that was done in the South versus the North. And that's what we said, but there was also… 52 miles per year of paving asphalt hot mix overlay. So 152 additional miles of road has been reconditioned and resurfaced every year from 2013 to 2023, which adds up to the same 1,500 mile discrepancy the North Mississippi has." (Transcript remarks)

The commissioner said the disparity likely accumulated over a 10‑year period and asked the commission to address how funds and projects are prioritized. He emphasized that he was not assigning blame to individuals but urging the commission to correct the records and pursue policy changes if needed.

Commission members acknowledged the concern and indicated staff would assemble the data for a work session. One commissioner noted that Hurricane Katrina and legislative decisions historically shifted funding toward southern districts, which could affect recent trends, and staff said Commissioner Brad was arranging a work session to review the numbers.

No formal vote or policy change was recorded during the meeting; the discussion closed with an agreement to examine the data in greater detail in a follow‑up session.

Ending

Commissioners asked staff for cleaner, consolidated data and a scheduled work session to review the recalculated mileage and funding distribution across districts. The transcript records the commissioner concluding, "So I'm off my soapbox... I do appreciate us getting to this point. I appreciate finally getting the data right so I could crunch the numbers."