Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs is beginning to reopen the city while following the guidelines set forth by Governor Tate Reeves and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“What I did…is adopt the governor’s guidelines and started to open up those things that he said and the CDC and the president’s task force said we can open,” Flaggs said. “We are going to phase add. Every week we are given some authority to do something, we will phase it in.”
The city is beginning to open up restaurants and retail businesses, however, Flaggs hopes Reeves will consider opening up casinos and other tourist programs sooner rather than later.
“I hope if the legislature is going to start talking about small businesses, they start talking about tourism, because most of my revenues come from tourist-related programs,” Flaggs said.
Regarding the “unnecessary” dispute between Reeves and chamber leaders Philip Gunn and Delbert Hosemann, Flaggs thinks the governor is in the right and should be the one to appropriate the $1.25 billion in federal relief money as that is the quickest and easiest way to provide aid to Mississippians.
“This time the governor is right,” Flaggs, a former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, said. “In crises, you ought to look to one person and not a body of people. We were all Democrats when Haley Barbour was Republican…and we put the politics aside [following Hurricane Katrina].”
While noting his longtime friendship with all three of the statewide officials, Flaggs urges Reeves, Hosemann, and Gunn to put this squabble in the past.
“I am begging them to put this behind us,” Flaggs said. “We just need help.”
To watch the full interview with Flaggs, check out the video below.
