Jackson Free Press

HOUSEKEEPING - A WEEKLY SUMMARY

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING FEBRUARY 9, 2007

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

The House of Representatives this week considered, approved and sent to the State Senate more than 250 pieces of legislation that originated in our chamber. This came as we completed the sixth week of the 90-day session, which began Jan. 2 and is scheduled to end on Sunday, April 1.

We had faced a Thursday, Feb. 8 midnight deadline for floor action on these bills. Most of the bills that had earlier passed muster in our House committees also passed on the House floor by that deadline, but a few died or were not considered at all.

The issues we handled on the House floor during the week were wide-ranging—everything from increasing the pay for poll workers (HB 1097) to creating a pilot project for hunting deer over grain (HB 423) to setting up regulation of private investigators (HB 750).

The bill affecting poll workers would increase the pay of polling place clerks to $120 a day and poll managers to $150 a day. It was noted that it has been several years since the pay of these valuable workers had been increased, and that the new technology they must learn and oversee made it feasible to increase their pay now.

A pilot project for hunting deer over corn would be created this year in the following counties: Amite, Calhoun, Choctaw, Clarke, Copiah, Forrest, George, Greene, Hancock, Harrison, Itawamba, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson Davis, Jones, Kemper, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lincoln, Marion, Monroe, Neshoba, Newton, Pearl River, Perry, Pike, Pontotoc, Scott, Smith, Stone, Tippah, Walthall, Wayne, Webster, Wilkinson and Winston. The State Wildlife Commission would assess the project and report to the 2008 Legislature. This issue has been passed by the House before only to die in the State Senate.

Private investigators have never been regulated in Mississippi. HB 750 would create a seven-person board to establish the regulations. “Private eyes” conduct all sorts of investigations, including evidence for court cases, recovering stolen property and character identification.

Included among the dozens of bills considered were these:

> HB 1267 to create a task force to study the growing incidence of autism and ways to improve services offered to these children.

> HB 834 authorizing the State Board of Education to develop a pilot program to redesign secondary schools in Mississippi to function as curriculum and educational entities as well as workforce development centers. Contingent upon appropriations, a minimum of 15 sites will be selected for implementation during the 2007-2008 school year.

> HB 1303 allowing for the return of a seized weapon after charges have been dropped if the weapon’s owner is an adult.

> HB 1409 to impose a 40-cents per pack “equity assessment” on cigarette companies that were not a part of the state’s original lawsuit agreement with the national tobacco industry. The estimated $16 million raised from this fee would be split among the University of Mississippi Medical Center for a cancer research center, the State Veterans Board for its veterans’ nursing homes and for firetrucks for volunteer agencies across the state. The House passed a similar bill last year.

> HB 638 to spur voluntary consolidation of water, wastewater and storm water services in the six Coastal counties hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Effective delivery of these services constitute a major issue as the area continues to rebuild following the Aug. 29, 2005 disaster.

> HB 351 authorizing the Mississippi Transportation Commission and local governments to construct and finance a toll road to complement an existing non-toll road, or to enter into a contract with a private developer for a toll toad. Toll collections would end upon final payoff of any debt associated with the toll roads—none of which exist in Mississippi today.

> HB 235 to help bolster the state’s dairy farm industry by reimbursing farmers for the transportation surcharge they must pay to make up the milk deficit in the state. Mississippi now has less than 200 dairy farms, down from 850 just a few years ago. Hurricane Katrina also wiped out several dairies in the southern part of the state.

> HB 1144 says illegal immigrants cannot be granted in-state tuition at Mississippi’s universities and colleges.

> HB 1079 authorizing municipalities to tow and impound vehicles for owners’ failure to pay fines or outstanding warrants.

> HB 1532 to expand the type of information to be included in public officials’ “statement of economic interest” filed annually. This would include financial assets gained through such income sources as so-called “blind trusts,” even though our state laws do not contain language on blind trusts.

> HB 1465 to create a program to train doctors to practice in rural, underserved areas.

> HB 864 waiving tuition at state colleges for children and unmarried spouses of service persons who were killed in the line of duty or of disabled veterans of the regular military or National Guard who were on active duty. The disability must be at least 70 percent disabling.

> HB 806 expanding the youthful offender prison in Leake County by 500 beds. It was stated that our prison system has only 20 beds available with a spiraling crime rate.

> HB 1132 creating a new school nurse program for all schools in the state and providing the funds to operate it.

> HB 1316 allowing counties to use equipment and purchases to bury paupers.

> HB 860 make it a felony to steal historical markers valued ay $500 or more from the Mississippi Blues Trail, with a penalty up to $10,000 in fines and up to 10 years in state prison.

> HB 905 creating a statewide registry for protective orders to be used in domestic violence cases, which would give law enforcement agencies better access to those records.

> HB 898 increasing civil fines for employers who refuse to comply with orders to withhold pay in child support payments cases.

> HB 929 to begin regulation of hospice facilities by the State Department of Health. Each hospice site will be required to pay a fee of $1,000 under the plan.

> HB 1104 increasing the fine to $500 for income tax preparers who are grossly negligent in the preparation of tax returns—usually meaning someone who frequently understates the amount of tax due.

> HB 1190 increasing rebates for companies making motion pictures in the state.

> HB 1185 leasing of old State School for the Blind property for private development.

> HB 1275 to continue leases on the property where Mississippi Memorial Stadium is located with the hope that new projects will be more upscale such as condos and UMC housing.

> HB 1102 revising some administrative provisions of the state’s medical certificate of need process and adding new nursing homes in Rankin and Hinds counties and 120 new psychiatric nursing home beds at a site to be determined.

> HB 1202 to build a new 24-bed hospital in Kemper County named for John Stennis.

> HB 1492 creating a long-range financial plan for the state’s parks system.

> HB 1180 setting up a system ensuring funding for the state’s 15 community colleges at a midpoint level between K-12 and the senior colleges.

HOUSEKEEPING - A WEEKLY SUMMARY

REPORT FOR THE WEEK ENDING FEBRUARY 16, 2007

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

House members this week sent a strong message to the Senate that Mississippi should raise tobacco taxes and reduce grocery taxes. This came during the seventh week of the 2007 Legislature.

The vote in favor of HB 247 was so large (91 for, 27 against) that it would easily override the veto of such a measure that has been threatened by Gov. Haley Barbour. Earlier in the week, a Senate leader said he had no plans to even bring the bill up before that body, which passed a similar bill in 2006.

Under the bill, Mississippi's per-pack excise tax on cigarettes would rise from 18-cents per pack to $1 per pack on July 1 and the state's highest-in-the-nation 7 percent tax on groceries would be cut in half to 3 1/2 percent. Municipalities would be "made whole" by increasing the sales tax diversion back to them from 18.5 percent to 37 percent. It was noted that the House had passed this same bill last year and has voted positively on this issue about 10 times over the past few years. The bill heads to the Senate.

Discussion of the issue included a report from the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University on the problems caused by tobacco. It said there is "robust support" for the idea that increasing cigarette taxes is an effective way to motivate smokers to quit. An astounding figure is that an estimated 4,400 Mississippi high school students start smoking each year.

Appropriation bills to fund state government and general legislation coming over from the Senate highlighted the week in the House as the 2007 session passed the halfway mark.

We also heard several reports on the continuing recovery of the Mississippi Coast from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the area on Aug. 29, 2005.

Last week as you'll remember, we reported that the House had met the Feb. 8 deadline to complete work on the general bills (non-financial) that came from our own committees. The next major deadline we face is Feb. 21 for floor action on appropriation and revenue bills that began in the House. Our Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees worked this week to get those bills ready for the floor action, some of which was handled by week's end.

Feb. 27 is the deadline by which House committees must complete work on the general bills that originated in the Senate. One major piece of action that occurred in the Senate this week was passage of HB 238 to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. There are slight differences in the House and Senate versions of this issue, and those will be ironed in conference committee sessions later.

A major focus in one of our committees was the future of the State Department of Health. It is expected that the committee will soon bring a bill to the House floor for debate and a vote.

A big portion of House floor action this week centered on appropriation bills for state agencies. Some are for agencies that depend strictly on what we call "special funds" to finance their operations. This means fees and other charges for the services they provide to the public. Some agencies get a mix of regular state funds, special funds and federal funds.

The largest single budget overall in state government is HB 1695 for the Governor's Division of Medicaid, which is the health insurance program for the needy, aged and infirmed. For FY 2008, Medicaid is projected to spend $4.132 billion—of which $385.5 million will be state funds and the rest federal. We were told that post-Katrina federal dollars continue to arrive to help our Medicaid programs.

We also passed HB 1697 to put $20 million into a new tobacco cessation/education program through the Mississippi Tobacco Control Commission. This agency would do the same type of work of the now-defunct Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi.

In total, the House has proposed spending bills worth $4.923 billion of state funds. Including state, special and federal funds, the overall budget for FY 2008 beginning July 1 will be over $13 billion.

As for Hurricane Katrina recovery, we heard a report from the agency handling a homeowners assistance program. A total of 17,674 applications were received for phase one, with 3,447 of those deemed ineligible. Just over 12,000 of the grants have been closed with a dollar value of $705.5 million.

Phase two of the program is underway, with 10,504 applications including those ineligible for phase one (there is different eligibility criteria for each phase). Also, homeowners in both phases could also be eligible for grants up to $30,000 to defray costs of elevating their homes out of potential danger.

It is estimated that about $1 billion of the original $3.4 billion will go unspent, so there is a good chance there will be a phase three for renters and first-time homeowners. It was noted in hearings that Pearl River County has special problems caused by the huge influx of new residents following Katrina.

The Stennis Institute gave a report on first-responders and other Katrina-related manners. The report made note of the complete failure of communications systems, leading to first-responders' having almost no information on what other groups were doing in the storm's immediate wake. Lack of overall authority, leadership and a disaster plan also was noted. The report urges the Legislature to support funding of a statewide wireless communications system and to help small local governments pay for their share of it. The report said that while the state learned from its experiences with Hurricane Camille in 1969, "it did little to prepare us for our next enormous disaster."

Port officials from Pascagoula told our Ports, Harbors and Airports Committee that the facility is rebounding well from Katrina, which dealt it $25 million worth of damages, of which $15 million was insured and $10 million of that has been recovered by the state. A port official also said that the Navy hospital ship docked there after Katrina served about 3,000 people before it was told to move elsewhere.

We also passed HB 1707 to provide $500,000 in startup money for Gov. Barbour's commission to study a civil rights museum. The House had earlier voted to construct such a facility honoring this state's strong legacy in the fight for civil and human rights.

We had several artistic treats this week. The Mississippi Arts School Choir performed in the House chamber as did the Hill Fire theatrical group from the Winona area. We also honored our state 4-H leaders. The organization began in Mississippi 100 years ago this year.