Jackson Free Press

State legislators will consider reform and reorganization of state government in January, Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant said today. At a news conference this morning, Bryant released a report detailing recommendations for improving efficiency and accountability in Mississippi's government.

"This is a goal I have had since becoming lieutenant governor," Bryant said in a statement. "From reforming tax and ethics laws to holding firm for balanced budgets, this plan is another step to having the right-sized government for Mississippi."

The report is the product of the Commission for a New Mississippi, a panel that Gov. Haley Barbour tasked Bryant with leading in his 2008 State of the State address. In addition to Bryant, the 17-member commission includes philanthropist and Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, former Democratic Congressman Mike Espy and Mississippi Economic Council President Blake Wilson.

The report begins with a review of past government-reform efforts in the state. State officials have commissioned a report on improving government efficiency in nearly every decade since a 1932 Brookings Institution report found that the state could benefit from consolidating some of its services and agencies.

In 1988, then-Gov. Ray Mabus commissioned a report amid similarly dire economic circumstances. That report found the state lacked a long-range plan and that the executive branch was not sufficiently accountable to voters.

"We looked back at the history of over 80 years of government efficiency reports being submitted by groups to the governor and the legislature," Bryant said. "What we found was that the great recommendations in those reports were largely not adopted and our current budget process is broken."

Indeed, one of the key recommendations of Bryant's report is that the state actually follows through on a 1994 act that requires "performance based budgeting." The law requires state agencies to submit performance goals along with their appropriations requests. Legislators are then supposed to base their appropriations decisions on how an agency actually performaned. In practice, however, most legislators simply rely on appropriations figures from the previous year, Bryant's report said.

The new report also recommends that the state develop a statewide long-range plan to coordinate the strategic plans of individual agencies. This plan would bring a specific goal like the Mississippi Development Agency's target for tourist-registration numbers in line with overarching objectives of the entire state.

The strategic plan and other recommendations from the report will be on the Legislature's agenda when it convenes next year, Bryant said.

"We have been working on legislation to implement all of the things (in the report), and Senator Alan Nunnelee will introduce the entire reform bill in January," Bryant said.