Jackson Free Press

The 2008 session of the Mississippi Legislature will officially end April 19. Some bills have not made the cut, and either were changed completely or will not see the light of day without deadline extensions.

The immensely unpopular HB 859, which would have offered pay increases to legislators and many state and county officials, got past the Senate, though senators stripped the bill of all language dealing with legislative pay raises.

A Senate bill that Attorney General Jim Hood said would have handicapped his ability to sue corporations for malfeasance is sitting on a House calendar, where it will likely wither away into nonexistence.

The attorney general's office has earned more than $165 million for the state since 2003 by suing pharmaceutical and oil companies, as well as defunct telecommunications giant WorldCom. Some of those better deals came with the help of outside attorneys looking to link their court case with the state attorney general's office. Hood said the Senate's sunshine bill would have forced those attorneys to put their case up on the auction block before taking it to the attorney general.

"Why don't they just say, ‘We don't want you suing corporate wrongdoers'?" Hood said.

Controversial language removing some state agencies from Personnel Board oversight for one year is going nowhere in the House. Senate leaders and Gov. Haley Barbour want a bill that gives agency directors the ability to hire and fire employees more quickly, though labor unions say the bill actually served to remove state employees from protection.

Mississippi Alliance of State Employees President Brenda Scott said the language removing state employee protection keeps changing its face as it repeatedly attempts to tip-toe into the House.

"It started out as SB 2680, then died in committee on the House side, so they amended HB 609—the hiring freeze bill—and that didn't work. Then, in the Senate, they amended the Marine Resources bill to include that language. Until they go home, everything is on the table, so we have to keep our eye on it," Scott said.

The Legislature passed SB 2051 to deal with fiscal year 2007 budget shortfalls, such as the more than $70 million shortfall in Medicaid, but the House and Senate are having a hard time working out funding for Medicaid in the next fiscal year. The state program is facing more than $160 million in red ink in 2008, and the Senate and House can't wrap their heads around any one revenue increase.

A majority of the House is still pushing for a $1 increase in the state's tax on a pack of cigarettes, though Barbour—a former tobacco lobbyist—opposes it.

The Senate had pushed for a daily tax on patients occupying hospital beds, though the cigarette-tax-versus-patient-tax battle is in limbo—and with bill deadlines passed, will likely need a special session—while the Senate fights with the House over the efficiency of the state's face-to-face eligibility requirement for Medicaid.

Medicaid officials say the state's practice of forcing Medicaid recipients to show up in person to re-certify their Medicaid eligibility has saved the state more than $200 million through fraud reduction. House members say the department has spent unknown amounts of money on hiring new employees to meet with recipients, and that the vast majority of people booted off Medicaid by the tactic actually do qualify for Medicaid and only wind up successfully reapplying for it a few weeks later.

The Senate scrapped a House bill that did away with face-to-face on Tuesday, saying the language did not belong in an appropriation bill, though the move forces Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant to call senators back Tuesday night to continue a battle over the issue on into the wee hours.