THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL | GINA BUTKOVICH
Seeking to take advantage of scale and unlock more economic opportunities, seven counties in west Tennessee, eastern Arkansas and north Mississippi are forming a regional compact.
The effort, called TriState Compact Agency, would fund transportation projects and seek to capture federal dollars for projects that benefit the region.
"What this does is help us achieve funding as a unit that benefits all of us," Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite said at a Friday luncheon to unveil the broader effort. "Specifically, what that looks like is we've got to get past looking at our individual jurisdictions and realize there's a bigger picture out there.
In addition to DeSoto County, the other six counties are Shelby, Fayette and Tipton in Tennessee and Crittenden, Mississippi and Craighead in Arkansas.
The Compact Agency has been proposed by the Mid-South Mayor's Council, which consists of 15 mayors from the three-state region. The agency's goal is to assist the Mid-South in obtaining federal money for transportation projects that will benefit the entire region
"This alliance could potentially provide funding for many projects," Musselwhite said in early November. "The reason it's important to have a regional perspective is that some of the large projects, from a financial perspective, are too big for one city so anytime you have a collaboration that could potentially provide funding for things that a single city or county or state couldn't afford, you can accomplish things that you couldn't do on your own."
RegionSmart, the organization that oversees the Mid-South Mayor's Conference, hosted the fundraising luncheon that attracted about 150 people.
Musselwhite, Arkansas State Senator Keith Ingram, Tipton County Executive Jeff Huffman and William Dunavant III, CEO and president of Dunavant Enterprises Inc., appeared on the panel discussion.
"When I think of regionalism, I think of looking beyond your current political subdivision," Huffman said. "If you're an elected official, you tend to look at your area, the area that folks elect you from, and regionalism means you've got to look beyond that."
One of the projects that has been frequently talked about in DeSoto County is the widening of Interstate 55. The Mississippi Department of Transportation put the project on its Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) plan for the years 2017 to 2020. In December of 2021, DeSoto County mayors put the project on their wish list to legislators on how they want the billions of dollars expected to be given to Mississippi from the federal government for infrastructure projects to be spent.
“We feel like that project should be on the top of the list,” Musselwhite said. “You can imagine, anybody who understands politics, we went and asked them for $368 million, and we did that with a straight face. They looked at us like we were crazy. How this works for us, with the infrastructure money, we’re obviously not going to get that project fully funded, we’re hoping to get a piece of it anyway.”
Last summer, Musselwhite said he discussed the issue with U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Hyde-Smith told Musselwhite that having other states working with Mississippi could help them in securing all the funding needed to widen the interstate.
In Memphis and Arkansas, officials say there is strong interest in using the agency to secure funding to build a third bridge to cross the Mississippi river. In May of 2021, a crack was discovered in the Hernando de Soto I-40 bridge that connects Tennessee and Arkansas, causing the essential traffic and commerce artery to halt for nearly 13 weeks. That closer meant more traffic on the Mississippi River bridge crossing from Arkansas to Dyer County.