Jackson Free Press

The Mississippi House continued the Senate's attack on text-messaging while driving last week, approving Senate Bill 2280. The bill, which only applies to 15- and 16-year-old drivers, establishes a $500 fine for any youth caught in the act of pushing little buttons while driving, and ups that fine to $1,000 if authorities manage to link the act to a traffic accident.

A failed House amendment had applied the new law to all drivers, but opponents argued that the amendment amounted to government intrusion on an otherwise perfectly legal act. They were fine with the intrusion, so long as it didn't mean them, however. The bill passed with an 83-to-37 vote and now heads to the Senate for more tweaking.

The same bill also increases the qualifying age for license ownership from 16 years to 16 years plus six months and includes a provision requiring teens to stay in school if they want to keep their driver's license.

Off to Conference
Some bills in conference include HB 1142, which authorizes the state to remove superintendents and board members of failing school districts and put them into a recovery district personally supervised by state authorities. Another bill in conference is HB 105, which delays a $59 million hospital bed tax the state demands from hospitals for coverage of Medicaid patients. Republicans propose to fill a $90 million hole in the state's Medicaid budget with the tax on hospital patients, while Democrats largely support filling the deficit with an increase in the state's tax on cigarettes, or a combination of a cigarette tax increase and a smaller hospital bed tax.

House members hope to defray the costs of the hospital tax by temporarily filling the hole with money from the federal stimulus package, if federal guidelines allow.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Republicans failed to pass a rule suspension resolution that would have allowed them to revisit a voter ID bill that key Republicans recently killed in committee.

Republicans have pushed for voter ID for years, but killed the voter ID bill after House Democrats inserted language into it allowing early voting and returning suffrage to people convicted of crimes like writing bad checks. Critics condemned Republican senators who killed the bill because they had been some of the strongest advocates of voter ID.

The rule suspension, however futile, did at least allow the same GOP senators who killed the bill to save face. All four members, including Merle Flowers, R-Southaven, Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville and Billy Hewes, R-Gulfport voted in favor of the failed suspension.

Jackson Bills
Gov. Haley Barbour is signing bills this week, including SB 3281, which would allow the state to issue $20 million in bonds and then lend the money to Hinds County for infrastructure development for the anticipated Capitol Green Project in downtown Jackson.

Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, authored Senate Bill 3281, which he believes will jumpstart a project that has suffered slow delivery since it was first proposed in 2006. Entergy owns much of the property, located along downtown Commerce Street, but approved opening the property for real-estate development, which could eventually include office and business suites, residential living and a new movie theater along a natural bluff overlooking the Pearl River.

Barbour also signed into law last Wednesday a bill that will allow Jackson voters to decide on a 1 percent sales tax that would fund road repairs and additional police officers and firefighters. The tax increase, which must be approved by a 60 percent referendum vote, is expected to generate $21 million.

The Virgin Overrides
Barbour could face his first veto override if he refuses to sign a House bill limiting the state's right to take property. House Bill 803 restricts any governmental usage of eminent domain "for the purpose of converting privately owned real property for retail, office, commercial, industrial or residential development; or for enhancement of tax revenue or for transfer to a person."

The bill intends to limit state land seizure for roads and bridges and restricts the government from claiming property for transfer to a non-government entity, a corporation or other business entity, or for public-private partnerships.

Barbour told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal last week that legislation like HB 804, which he believes doesn't give the state adequate power of eminent domain for major economic projects, is "fatally flawed."

The House bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate March 3 with no nays, however, and Public Property Committee Chairman Jack Gordon, D-Okolona, said the Senate would likely override the governor's veto.

"I heard (Barbour) may veto it, but it's a House bill, and I think the House would override it, and I'm sure the Senate would override it on that issue, too, because it passed with an overwhelming vote," Gordon said.