‘Trey Way’: Millions in taxpayer funds flow to powerful lawmaker’s country club and Jackson neighborhoods

State taxpayers have shelled out $7 million to improve the private country club neighborhood and golf course where one of Mississippi’s most powerful lawmakers lives.

State taxpayers are also on the hook to improve the quiet, already well-paved northeast Jackson cul-de-sac where House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar owns a home.

As Ways and Means Chairman, Lamar exerts enormous sway over how the $7 billion state budget is funded. He’s also become the House’s de facto arbiter of “Christmas tree” bills — hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on lawmakers’ pet projects for their districts.

Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia and one of House Speaker Jason White’s closest advisers, has been extremely successful at bringing home the bacon to his rural home district. He’s also helped secure millions of dollars for his own neighborhood in the process, and has worked in a couple of personal property deals amid the state projects.

A Mississippi Today investigation found Lamar helped secure millions in state taxpayer dollars to:

• Repave and widen Country Club Road, which runs in front of his Tate County house — in part to make it safer and easier for golf carts to traverse, according to the county engineer — and to build a traffic roundabout and 10 speed humps in a less than 2-mile stretch of the rural road.
• Improve drainage, build new cart paths and bridges, re-sod or do other work on the golf course and surrounding yards.
• Have the city of Senatobia buy the small water company that serves fewer than 200 homes in the country club neighborhood, then secure $2 million more in state money this year to improve the system.
• Make $400,000 in improvements to a Northeast Jackson cul-de-sac where he owns one of 14 homes – a project that doesn’t appear to be any Jackson leaders’ priority as many capital city thoroughfares suffer from neglect.

Below is a list of stories that are part of Mississippi Today’s investigation. They include a long takeout on the Senatobia projects Lamar helped secure, a story about $400,000 earmarked for his quiet cul-de-sac in Jackson, the system of legislative spending that allows these types of projects to pass and information about how we reported this investigation.