“ You have to have people who can go out and solve problems on their own, and don ' t have to come back to you, and they don ' t have to be motivated.” – Chris Graham, Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Revenue
Mississippi began constructing their new warehouse in 2025.
“ You have to have people who can go out and solve problems on their own, and don ' t have to come back to you, and they don ' t have to be motivated.” – Chris Graham, Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Revenue
been fascinating to watch, how people can influence entire groups by some video they put on the internet.” Which is to say that he tries to see the sunny side in our Smartphone era.“ All of the advances in that area have been really tremendous the last couple of years,” he says.“ So what I think is you ' ll continue to see all of this with data centers and AI now. And that ' s going to create even more opportunities. It’ s really going to be interesting to see what happens in the next five years, I think. The people who are able to figure out how to get in and use that on the industry side, particularly, I think will be very successful.”
HIRING AND TRAINING
Bringing on and educating employees is a critical component of any leader’ s role. At the Mississippi Department of Revenue, Graham says,“ We look for people who get things done.”
“ You want to find somebody who ' s a self-starter and self-energized and willing to do things in our business,” he adds.“ You have to have people who can go out and solve problems on their own, and don ' t have to come back to you, and they don ' t have to be motivated.”
Graham has noticed a shift in hiring since Covid−19.
“ We saw the Great Resignation, just like everybody else did during Covid,” he recalls.“ We had to change our approach to recruiting. A place like ours, historically, would have people come to us looking for jobs. Now, we have to go out and meet people where they are and do a lot more recruiting, a lot heavier recruiting, than we used to have to do before the Great Resignation.”
Once brought on board, employee training has also changed— especially for younger workers.
“ I think the younger generation likes to see a lot of meaning in their work,” Graham says.“ So we spend a lot of time talking with our folks and educating them about how this task that you ' re doing, how that has an impact on everything from education to public safety, because we ' re in the business of collecting money and providing funds to the state.”
“ And so we spent a lot of time talking with our folks about the importance of what they do, because you always see that when you ' re dealing with a committee, or a taxpayer who might be irate, and we like for them to see the other side of that as well, which is we ' re supporting all the public functions of government,” he adds.“ We ' re providing most of the funding for the state. So we really spend a lot of time educating our folks on the importance of what they do and how it really helps the state operate.”
Looking ahead, Graham eagerly anticipates the completion of Mississippi’ s new warehouse.
“ We ' re really excited about it,” he says.“ It ' s been a long time coming. It ' s been something that we ' ve been working on since 2020. We got the funding for it in 2024, and we ' ve been constructing it since 2025. We ' re really looking forward to completing that in 2027, and modernizing our warehouse operations so that we can provide top service to our permits in the state. We ' re really excited about getting to the finish line on that.” •
22 StateWays • Summer 2026 www. stateways. com