Jackson Free Press

AP reports: "Some black lawmakers say they think Gov. Haley Barbour and Senate leaders are trying to bypass House Judiciary A Committee Chairman Ed Blackmon in a debate over limiting lawsuits—and that it's happening, in part, because the chairman is black."
___
Following is the full transcript of the Caucus', and Blackmon's, comments, transcribed by the JFP's Jessica Kinnison: [Verbatim] May 27, 2004/State Capitol: Chairman Robertson: Good morning, first of all let me thank all of y'all for coming on very short notice. This morning we are here for one particular reason, there are several reasons we are here, but there is one we have in mind and that is the legislative process and how it has been handled. (Click for more.)

Before I make my opening statement, I'm going to turn it over to some of the chairmen who have been in the trenches with all this for these past weeks concerning different issues of voter ID and Tort Reform but one of the things that we are here and the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus is very hardened about is the process how our black chairmen have been treated. We try to play by the rules but as my good friend, Jesse Jackson said that "every time we try to play the game they change the rules" and that is that numbers are nothing but numbers and I have been here for twenty-one years and we have passed legislation that has 75 or 80 signatures on it but nothing happened to them. Only certain groups come up with 60 and it must be considered. In the past, this is the responsibility of the chairmen and we are here to tell the Mississippi legislative block chairmen, stick by the rules, until the rules are changed, and at this specific time we are going to bring one of our leading conferees, our chairmen of Jud A, Representative Ed Blackmon.

Blackmon: Thank you, now we are in the midst of a, I think, a change in the way we do business in Mississippi. I've been here for, now my twenty-second year, and nothing has happened during those twenty-two years to compare with what is going on now. We have the executive branch, not only attempting to run the executive branch, but now trying to run the Senate and they succeeded in that. But also now trying to run the House of Representatives, and I guess they figure that the only way that that can happen is to find a way to get around the chairmen, the newly appointed chairmen, some of us assuming high positions that have here before not been allowed to house black chairmen. I found this out very early.

During the regular session, when a part of the governor's campaign, that being Tort Reform, came up for consideration. Now, I have been here long enough to know, that when a governor runs on issues, those issues are going to come before the legislature and that's fine with me. Those issues are usually flushed out, worked out, voted one way or the other, but I have noticed that all the years, the people who have been involved in that process are the chairmen of those committees that handle the subject areas. When Tort Reform came up in the legislature during the regular session, I found myself being the one who really didn't think it was necessary to have that issue before the legislature this year, being the one to find my counterparts in the Senate, trying to find them to talk to about it. I found it very strange that I couldn't find, very often, anybody to sit around and dialogue about this important piece of legislation.

In fact, we only got a chance to talk during the last day of a deadline to consider legislation. I found it odd that nobody seems to have any real interest to talk to me about this very important issue, since it was Jud A, the committee which I chair, that was to handle this legislation. We go into the special session, and I find that really there is no interest in the legislative process and having me involved, instead I find a bill introduced by a member , I should say that was sponsored, the lead author by a member that is not a member of the Jud A committee, a bill that was being signed by X number of members of the House of Representatives, not one person has talked to me about it.

Usually if you've got interest in legislation, you come and talk to your chairman, " Mr. Chairman, I've got this bill and I have an interest in it, and I want to get your views on it and see what we can do about getting this bill before your committee." Not one person talked to me about this important piece of legislation. I heard about it through comments from the governor, comments from the press. But if this was so important why not talk to me about it. See if there was something we could work out with it, get passed my objections if I had any. I haven't heard about it from anybody to this day. But, it is now appeared as a strike-all in the Senate bill and somehow the Senate thinks that I, as chairman, should accommodate this rogue method, this aberration of the process.

Now, the way I see it, we don't need a Judiciary A committee, you don't need me, you don't even need a House of Representatives. The way this process is going now, all you need is the governor upstairs to tell us what he wants to do and this is whats going to happen. That is what he thinks. Now, I'm not going to lay down because I didn't get here alone. Too many people have worked hard to get us here. Now, Robert Clark came here in 1967 and was ignored because he was a lone black man in this house, in this legislative process. He was ignored! It took him years, to be recognized. Now that man worked long hours in these halls by himself. Until, some of us came to join him and the others who came after him. And we worked long hours in this body to be recognized, to be given a legitimate voice in the legislative process and I am not going to let the executive branch roll us back to 1967.

Now I know a little something about Washington, D.C., I went to school there, maybe not long enough to know as much as the governor knows about Washington, D.C., but I know something about Washington D.C. politics, it's polarizing, they malign, they single out and they try to crush their opposition to get what they want. Fortunately, in Mississippi we have been able to stay away from that, until now. I don't believe that Mississippians want that kind of government, where we sit down here and gridlock, look at the person across the hall and say that's my enemy, I don't need to talk to them. I don't believe the state of Mississippi citizens want that. Now, what has happened to us in this process? We have now a push for legislation that most members don't have a clue whats in that. They want to take the rights away from the citizens and hand them over to special interests. They want to line the pockets of those interest groups that pay for these elections. Now the average citizen out there is going to bed at night believing that we are looking after their interests.

They don't know that now there is a push to push legislation which says to them, that when you send your kid to a daycare or to a school, that because the Senate and the Executive branch says they want to allow premises liability, premises owners, to be immune from lawsuits from criminal acts of third parties. You rapists, the pedophiles of the world can come to Mississippi, because you're welcome. There is no duty to first determine whether or not the person you hire is a criminal or someone who could do harm to your children. Now, they are going to bed at night thinking, that when they travel the highways of this state and these big eighteen wheelers pass them on a daily basis that someone stands behind that driver in the event that that driver does something to cause the death or injury of their loved ones. They believe that here in Mississippi, they are being treated like everybody else in the United States that is that someone is going to be responsible for that driver's conduct.

Now, the Senate says no longer in the legislation they have here. That in the highways of Mississippi you are not going to be treated like the people traveling the highways of Alabama, Tennessee. Louisiana, and Arkansas because we are going to line the pockets of the owners of those vehicles and make sure that they don't have to pay the people that we injure here. And they talk about caps, like its some type of holy grail. Now, what are those kind of caps going to do for our people. It says that a housewife, a house father, or a child who has not gone to work yet, or someone who is retired has no worth in Mississippi. That is what they are saying. That in Arkansas, and Tennessee and Alabama and Louisiana that those people have some economic worth but not here in Mississippi. And they want me to go along with that?

Now, maybe they know something I don't know. Maybe, I'm mistaken that being chairman of Judiciary Aid might mean something. I have been here twenty-two years and twenty-one of them I was not chairman of Jud A, but I always thought it meant something to have that responsibility and that duty and obligation to the citizens of this state. Only this year did I find out, that those who believe, that it means nothing. If it does mean something, then I'm going to tell you this that I am not going to visit the wishes of the special interests, those powerful entities out there, on the souls and spirits and lives and aspirations and wishes and dreams of citizens of this state. We are going to have to stand up to them. We are going to have to stand up to the major forces in this country, that have chosen Mississippi as the incubator for the evil that has ceased to reap on the rest of this country.

And I think it starts here. It starts here in Mississippi, if we go down then there are other places that will go down behind us. Now, dollars and cents have their place but humans matter more.

I'm going to close with this, I appreciate the support of my colleagues behind me, many of whom are now chairmen of committees, because they understand my dilemma. They understand that in order to be affective, we cannot allow this process to be aberrant, this process has worked beyond the days of Bilbo and Vondeman and White. And it shouldn't change, just because we now have a change of face on these committees. And I'm not just standing up for myself now, I am standing up for all the chairmen behind me and all the chairmen that are going to come after us. Its unfortunate that we have an administration that is hell bent, hell bent, on bringing Washington D.C. politics to Mississippi.

When I first got here, I didn't think much of this process, I came here under Buddy Newman, you know why I didn't think much of it. But even he had a respect for the process, and everybody after him has had a respect for the process and the sooner that this governor and others understand that this process is the process the better off we will be. And I'm going to say this right now, as long as he tries to get around the process then I will not be a part of his process.

Before we take questions, we at the Caucus believe that there are two houses over here and we speak as one for both of them but also that there are other individuals on the other side, my Senators over here. And now we will have remarks from Senator Willie Simmons representing the Senate side.

Sen. Willie Simmons: Thank you Chairman Robertson, and on the Senate side I will hand it off to Chairman Blackmon and all the other chairmen on the House side because you are certainly representing the people who sent you here and the state of Mississippi, for the good of Mississippi. Unfortunately, on the Senate side, we have been playing a lot of games this year. As a matter of fact, I have been in the Senate for eleven years and we have been reduced to the less or worst integrity that I have seen. And the process is certainly tempted to be flawed, but let me just say to you, that as we look at this process and look at what we've done, this is more than about Tort Reform, this is about an attack on poor folks and racism in the state of Mississippi like I have never seen it before in recent years.

When you look at the very piece of legislation that we have passed, if you want to go to the department of human services which we did not enable, that was because that was an effort to pull individuals out from under the Mississippi personnel board and most of those people are poor folks and black folks. If you go to the division of Medicaid, where the governor requested 401 million dollars but we in reality gave him 481 million dollars by adding on a tax increase on beds. While at the same time kicking off 65 thousand poor folks and disabled folks. When you go to the Department of Correction, where we pulled it out from under the personnel board, but what we said in doing that was that those divisions that a large number of white employees that we were going to leave them on the personnel board for protection but those who did not have a majority white or black employees we were pulling you out from the personnel board so that the governor and the commissioner could eliminate some 500+ employers and save 7 million dollars. That is the kind of racism and attack on poor folks that we, the legislative black caucus, are standing up for today, and our chairperson as we move this process forward. And we challenge all of you to take a look at what we have done for black folks and poor folks while buying the governor a new jet and increasing his budget by 95%.

Chairmen Robertson: Again before we take any questions, as Senator Simmons said, we are here for all our chairmen, today it just happens to be Representative Ed Blackmon....when it comes to municipality they are going to stick by me, when it comes to Marine Resource they are going to stick by Billy Broomfield, and all the other chairmen. That's while we are here, not for any one chairmen but for all the chairmen.