The MDAH – Is It Broken?

Gregory E. Bingham

When measures are periodically proposed in the Mississippi legislature to change the appointment process for Trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), the cry “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” rings throughout the capitol.  The problem with this trite phrase is that no one bothers to look at objective facts to determine whether the agency is broken or not.

This unelected and self-appointing board annually submits a budget request which is signed by the Executive Director.  The budget request for 2026 was almost $70 million including approximately $35 million for capital projects with funding for 180 full time employees.  About the time that Katie Blount became executive director, the 2015 actual expenses were only about $13 million including $4 million in capital projects with funding for only 159 full time employees.  In a roughly 10-year period, the budget has quintupled in size and the staff has increased by 20. 

For perspective, let’s compare this to the Alabama Department of Archives and History.  The 2023 expenses for that agency were less than $9 million.  Clearly, Alabama is running a much leaner agency, but what about performance measures?  The Alabama Museum had about 30,000 visitors in 2023 compared to 50,000 visitors to the multiple Mississippi Museums with the flagship Two Museums contributing 36,000.  With a fraction of the budget, the Alabama agency fell short of Mississippi by only 6,000.  In the digital age, one should look at the social media performance, and in this measure, Alabama has 28,000 Facebook followers compared to only 16,000 for Mississippi.  By this point we begin to get the picture that Alabama is the state doing something right and that something is broken in Mississippi. 

The Alabama Department of Archives and History is governed by a Board of Trustees that consists of two members from each congressional district, two at-large members, and the Governor.  Board members are selected by a vote of the trustees and confirmed by the State Senate for each six-year term they serve. Incidentally, this board is representative of the race and gender of the state and is geographically distributed.  The MDAH board has two black members and two women which does not fairly represent the Mississippi demographics.  The areas of Starkville and Jackson are overly represented in the Mississippi Board and many areas such as Vicksburg have no representation at all. 

The legislators and the Mississippi Budget Office need to carefully review the MDAH 2026 Budget request and accompanying performance measures as $70 million is not necessary and outrageous.  Moreover, this request document clearly shows that the museums are not self-supporting and thus a continuous drain on the state treasury.  The MDAH is broken largely because the board and Executive Director are virtually unaccountable to the taxpayer.  The legislators need to fix the process of board appointments to at least have a fair racial, gender, and geographic representation of the state and to include the Governor as a trustee in a manner similar to Alabama. 

Gregory E. Bingham is a retired CPA with nearly 20 years of Governmental and Not for Profit experience. He is a graduate of the decorative arts program sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and now lives in Vicksburg and is restoring an 1853 Greek Revival Planters Cottage which he calls the Thrift Kain House.

Editor’s note(VDN) – The opinions expressed within this article do not necessarily reflect those of Vicksburg Daily News, its staff, or its affiliates.