Jackson Free Press

The Mississippi Legislature returned Jan. 4, and many legislators are not looking forward to the kind of cuts facing state departments. The Mississippi Department of Mental Health is looking at a shortfall of more than $30 million this year, which could easily mean the closing of some mental-health institutions in the state, delivering more mental-health patients into county jails and state prisons. The Mississippi Parents' Campaign claims the state's Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which offers state money to under-funded school districts with low sales tax revenue, is likely to be underfunded by $243 million. MAEP reductions could mean cuts in advanced placement classes and intervention programs for struggling students, among other programs.

Money issues will invariably generate considerable news over the next 90 days as the session wears on and legislators fight to come to terms with plummeting state sales-tax revenue. But while money will factor as heavily as it has every year for the last decade, controversial bills will also attract plenty of media attention this year.

Mexican't, GOP says
One of the more notorious issues sure to come out of the Legislature this year will target one of the state's smallest populations.

Republican legislators are promising to submit a bill mimicking a problematic Arizona law that the federal government is challenging in the courts. The Arizona law forces local and state law enforcement to detain people suspected of being undocumented residents for the purpose of requesting verification of residential status.

The law, called the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, requires immigrants to have in their possession at all times documents identifying them as legal residents or citizens. The Arizona law makes it a misdemeanor crime for a temporary resident to not carry the registration documents.

The NAACP and Latino advocates say the Arizona law provides little on which to base the suspicion of dubious residential status, other than a suspect's physical appearance. The federal government is seeking to halt the Arizona law, arguing that immigration enforcement is the exclusive role of the federal government, not state or local authorities. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked the more controversial aspects of the Arizona law.

Still Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, said he will file a bill this year in the Judiciary A Committee, despite the fact that the Arizona bill has hit that state hard in the pocketbook, costing the state $141 million in tourism revenue as a result of a subsequent economic boycott by critics.

The bill, he added, will not be an easy sell, even though he is Judiciary A chairman. "The immigration reform bill will take a lot of time and energy on my part in the Judiciary Committee," Fillingane said.

The Mississippi Legislature already passed a bill punishing undocumented residents for holding jobs in the state. The Mississippi Employment Protection Act, Senate Bill 2988, went into effect July 1, 2008. The law, which resembles a 2007 Arizona law that punishes employers who hire undocumented residents by potentially pulling business licenses, requires employers to authenticate the resident status of all employees through the federal database known as E-Verify.

The law pointedly targets all Mississippi agencies and government subdivisions, seeking to discourage the use of contractors employing undocumented workers. The law began applying to private employers with 250 or more employees in July 2008 and private employers with 100 or more employees in July 2009. It encompassed private employers with 30 or more employees by 2010 and will apply to all employers by July 2011.

The penalties are stiff, if you're a non-documented worker. For employers, the consequences of non-compliance include the cancellation of state contracts and ineligibility for future contracts for up to three years and the possibility of the revocation of the employer's business license for up to one year. Undocumented workers, however, can receive a felony conviction on their record for accepting or performing work for compensation. Upon conviction, a violator is subject to serve up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000 or both. The felony conviction, in and of itself, virtually puts a stopper on applying for U.S. citizenship, however—another happy side effect if you're out to curb immigration.

Republicans will look to wield Fillingane's new anti-immigrant proposal as a weapon on any Democrat willing to point out its flaws, if past actions are any indication.

The Mississippi Employment Protection Act, for example, is limited in effectiveness—presumably by Democrats, according to Republicans. In August, Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, pummeled Attorney General Jim Hood for what she described as his unwillingness to enforce the Mississippi Employment Protection Act.

"If E-verify (laws) had been implemented correctly, it would have worked, but we put it in the hands of the attorney general, and the attorney general has not done a very good job. As of this day, I don't know of one compliance (issue) or one thing publicly he's done. Maybe he's done something privately. But so far, I know of nothing," Currie declared at an August tea-party rally in Madison.

(The rally contained about 60 white people over age 45, and one 21-year-old Mexican American who said the rally made him "extremely nervous.")

At a September joint committee hearing on the proposed Mississippi-style Arizona bill, Fillingane also criticized Hood's office for not enforcing the law.

Hood's legislative liaison Blake Bee said Hood's office has received no valid investigative requests at the time, and his spokeswoman Jan Schaefer claims no one had approached the attorney general's office with an investigation as of December 28.

The Mississippi Employment Protection Act lists Hood's office as only one of five different agencies in charge of enforcement. Joining him is the Department of Employment Security, the Mississippi Tax Commission, the office of Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and the Department of Human Services.

All have the authority to seek penalties under the law and to bring charges for noncompliance against any employer or employee, yet Currie and Fillingane did not criticize Hosemann, a Republican, or any of the state agencies whose directors serve under Republican Gov. Haley Barbour.

Hosemann's office, which monitors state businesses, did not confirm how many actions his office had brought related to
SB 2988 since the law's 2008 inception. Spokeswoman Pam Weaver said Hosemann's office would not likely handle the investigatory aspects of a Mississippi Employment Protection Act charge, but would act only to yank business licenses at the successful conclusion of an investigation.

So far, she said, the department has pulled no licenses under MEPA.

In the meantime, a host of Republican legislators are looking to pass more bills interpreted by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance as "anti-immigrant" in nature.

Rep. Gary Chism, R-Columbus, submitted his version of the Arizona law, House Bill 54, which demands that all members of law enforcement—state, county and local—must make a "reasonable attempt" to determine the immigration status of the person "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States."

The bill, called the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," restricts law enforcement from "solely consider(ing) race, color or national origin" when considering asking a subject for his or her papers, but MIRA argues that there is little else on which an officer can base suspicion.

MIRA Executive Director Bill Chandler said he found the name of the "Safe Neighborhoods Act" revolting, considering it is the undocumented immigrants who are most frequently targeted for robbery and assault due to their penchant for carrying money on their person rather than putting it in a bank.

"Chism isn't promoting the safety of anybody," Chandler said. "What he's promoting is overt racial profiling and harassment of Latinos. (Republicans) are afraid of Latinos' connection to African Americans, and when Latino children grow up they tend to not vote Republican, considering their treatment by Republicans."

Other bills are more symbolic, such as Brandon Republican Rep. John Moore's House Bill 293, which seeks to limit the publication of all state documents to English, which state considers "the official language of the state of Mississippi." The bill also seeks to force all governmental entities to end the practice of printing a Spanish translation alongside English language text on government publications.

These bills will likely join a host of returnees that keep scrabbling out of their graves every legislative year, including bills to limit state services to immigrants or immigrant children, or Moore's 2010 session bill, House Bill 489, which would have restricted state benefits or services to non-citizens, even though non-citizens do not qualify for state services beyond federally-funded emergency room visits and public education for their children.

Other immigration bills that keep popping up include bills seeking to limit college or public education access to children of non-citizens, which defies numerous federal laws. There could even be the possibility of a bill looking to tamper with American "birthright citizenship."
Some legislators in Arizona are considering new state laws to refuse issuance of American birth certificates to the children of undocumented immigrants or issue them alternative certificates identifying their parents as unauthorized residents. The Sacramento Bee reports that some Arizona legislators may consider bills refusing Medicaid to children of non-citizens, and that Arizona legislators may be looking to coordinate their efforts with other state legislators.

Mississippi legislators have submitted similar bills in the past, which died in committee. Sen. Merle Flowers, R-Southaven, submitted Senate Bill 2396 during the 2009 legislative session requiring citizenship verification before an applicant can receive emergency disaster relief, public-health assistance and prenatal care or even access to soup-kitchen aid.

Much of the anti-immigrant legislation would provoke lawsuits that would test their mettle at the U.S. Supreme Court level, Chandler says.

"If these types of bills make it into law, you can damn well bet we'll be taking them up in court," he warned.

Mississippi College School of Law Professor Matt Steffey said he could not predict the legal endurance of Fillingane's bill without first seeing it on paper. (As of Jan. 3, Fillingane has not filed it.)

"Until we see the actual bill, no one can predict if it will make it, although if I were to pick a circuit court in which to try to defend the law, I think the Fifth Circuit is as good a court as any court," Steffey said. "It's viewed as a conservative circuit, and given the states that comprise the circuit, like Texas, the law hits very close to home with a lot of people who have considerable sympathy for the law in the absence of federal work to control illegal immigration."

The Problem with Payday
Laws regarding payday lending will doubtless reappear this year. In 1998, legislators passed the Check Cashers Act, which exempts payday lenders from a 36 percent annual-percentage-rate cap on loans of less than $1,000. Under the exemption, check-cashing operations can charge customers up to $21.95 per $100 loaned, or 18 percent, and the loans are typically due within two to four weeks. The Mississippi Department of Banking and Consumer Finance calculates the 18 percent simple interest into an annual percentage rate (APR) of 572.26 percent. The exemption is temporary and set to expire July 2012, and many payday-lending critics are calling upon legislators to let the exemption expire.

"The NAACP opposes predatory lending, and payday lending represents that," Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson said.

"The fees they charge amount to usury, which should be illegal. Mississippi policy makers should require all financial industries to abide by the same standards on interest caps."

Letting the exemption expire means capping loans at 36 percent, but Jamie Fulmer, vice president of public affairs for Advance America, which offers short-term loans, said the 36 percent APR cap makes offering $100 loans impossible, because the maximum a company could charge, in that case, would be $1.38 per every $100 loaned.

"Seven-and-a-half cents a day is what an APR cap breaks down to per $100 charged," Fulmer said. "There's no way we can conduct business under those circumstances."

To get a short-term payday loan, a borrower hands a payday lender a personal check for the total amount of his or her loan, which the lender holds until the loan's due date, which generally coincides with the borrower's next pay check in two to four weeks. In exchange, the borrower receives cash from the lender, less $21.95 per $100 interest. Companies like Advance America, a public corporation with numerous offices in the Jackson metro area, offer a $300 maximum payday loan, requiring a fee of about $66.

The practice puts the borrower at risk of bank overdraft charges, as well as a lender's insufficient funds fee of up to $30, if they don't have the money in the bank to cover the draft. Under state law, borrowers may not extend the same loan, but Mississippi Center for Justice Advocacy Director Beth Orlansky says that many payday borrowers begin a cycle of taking out subsequent loans with different payday lending companies to fund previous loans. Borrowing eight $300 loans a year means amassing $526.80 in fees.

Johnson said the type of borrower who must resort to $100 loans is not the type of borrower that has $526, or even $65, and notes that payday lenders are pointedly targeting poorer sections of the state, including sections of Jackson.

"As with any other predatory industry, payday lenders prey upon the poor and senior citizens. Part of our jobs, as policy-makers and advocacy groups, we protect our senior citizens and the poor against industries that would exploit them," Johnson said.

Ward 6 Councilman Tony Yarber said he wants payday lenders restricted in his ward, claiming that the city is suffering from saturation by the short-term loan industry.

"If you look around the city of Jackson, you can find these kinds of businesses flooding the market in the poorer areas," Yarber told the Jackson Free Press in November.

The Center for Responsible Lending reports that Hinds County contains a total of 71 businesses licensed as short-term lenders.

House Banking Committee Chairman George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, said he opposes groups demanding that he let the exemption expire because he said it would kill the payday-lending industry in the state.

"I'm not in the business of putting people out of business when unemployment in this state is at 10 percent," Flaggs said in November. "How much more fair could I be than to bring the bill out into committee for a vote? The other option is to kill the bill. Is that fair? That's what (payday-lending critics) want. I want everybody to vote on it. It has to go through my committee, go to the (House) floor and get through the Senate."

Flaggs went on to say that payday lenders' $21.95 fee compares favorably to late fees for utility, credit cards and phone services.

"Do you think $21.95 on a $100 loan for two weeks is very much? You can walk out of that office and go right back in there the next day and pay it off, and it's still $21.95," Flaggs said. "Take that same bill and don't pay it for a whole year, it's still just a $21.95 fee. They can't take that bill to the DA's office. They have to collect it for themselves. They don't have a lot of power like credit-card companies."

Flaggs said he has asked the Mississippi Department of Banking and Consumer Finance Commissioner John Allison to give him a bill addressing the exemption extension. Allison told the Jackson Free Press that the bill would tweak the exemption, while Flaggs said he would hold hearings during the session where "both sides" could debate a bill scribed.

Payday lenders are making sure they have a voice in that debate. Short-term lenders donated $4,900 out of Flaggs' $64,950 total contributions from short-term lenders in 2008 and $5,100 out of his $43,675 total contributions in 2009. Short-term lenders also comprised 10 of 21 donations to Senate Business and Financial Institutions Committee Chairman Gary Jackson, R-French Camp. In 2008, Jackson reported a total of $5,100 from payday lenders, out of a total of $14,700 for that period.

Lenders are also peppering senators and representatives who have no discernable connection to the banking industry, such as Fillingane, who received $250 from Advance America in 2009.

Redistricting Round
Republicans and Democrats this year will hammer out new districts in response to population changes across the state. Politicos like Mississippi State University's John C. Stennis Institute of Government Director Marty Wiseman and Jackson Sen. Hillman Frazier say the population in areas like the Delta, Hinds County and the northeast portion of the state shrank and will face the possibility of their district shrinking in relation to their population.

Traditionally, the House and the Senate each assemble a redistricting plan, which either shrinks or expands district territory based upon population counts and the political opportunity of the dominant party. Both chambers must submit their respective plans to the other chamber for approval, and that approval has rarely been difficult.

Not so this year, Wiseman said.

The legislative redistricting is done by resolution, not bill, so Barbour can't veto it, however, Wiseman believes Barbour will coax the Senate into fighting the House plan if it proposes to allow centrist Democrats to retain their slight dominance in the House.

"Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant's already said he is not going to just allow the Senate to blindly accept the House plan. Well, that threw down the gauntlet," Wiseman said.

The House, with Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Reinzi, has a 23-seat Democrat majority. But for the House to shift in favor of a Republican agenda, it will only have to switch 11 seats, Wiseman said, because of an abundance of conservative Democrats who commonly vote with Republicans. Republicans almost succeeded in removing McCoy two years ago, when they formed a near-majority with conservative-leaning white Democrats. McCoy retained his seat in a 2008 election with only a handful of votes over conservative Democrat Jeff Smith of Columbus, thanks to support from black legislators. (McCoy later showed his gratitude by assigning more black legislators to committee chairmanships).

Wiseman said Gov. Haley Barbour will likely back up Bryant's promise to fight a plan that helps centrist Democrats keep an edge, especially after McCoy proved the only strong voice of opposition to many of Barbour's plans to slash budgets for health care, education and other state programs.

"Remember Barbour's (Republican Governor's Association) campaign for 37 republican governors this past year? On top of his list was to win your race, get in and get a handle on redistricting in your state, because 630 odd new Republican legislators will put the GOP in good position to handle redistricting and build a nationwide push toward what Republicans dream to be a Democrat-proof House of Representatives nationally," Wiseman said.

"I can't believe he'd call for that in 37 states, and then tell his own state to just do what you want to."

If the Senate, under Barbour's command, opposes a centrist House redistricting plan, the House could retaliate by refusing a Senate plan that would keep conservatives in a dominant position.

Political author Jere Nash told the Jackson Free Press that if the chambers butt heads for too long, the issue could go before a three-judge panel consisting of a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge and two district-court judges chosen by the chief judge of the 5th Circuit—conservative Ronald Reagan appointee Edith Jones.

A comparable issue sprang from the Legislature's inability to agree on a redistricting plan after the 2000 Census, which erased a federal district and eventually allowed a three-judge panel to redraw the state's congressional districts. Democrats argued that the panel's decision fit perfectly with Republican desires and appealed it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court blessed the panel's plan, however.

Nash said the southern U.S. district courts that could decide the plan, should the House and Senate disagree, contains a majority of judges who are Republican appointees.

Money Talks
State lawmakers foresee a 2011 legislative session focused on holding steady, despite the fever for political hijinks that infects an election year.

Most legislators will be preoccupied with legislative redistricting, which takes place this year, also an election year for the vast majority of state lawmakers, Rep. Dirk Dedeaux, D-Perkinston, said. The rest of the Legislature's energy will probably go to budget negotiations for the upcoming 2012 fiscal year, as the state's difficult economic straits make other proposals nearly impossible to fund, he added.

"There's not a lot to get excited about because there's no money, and what money there is, everyone's going to be fighting over," Dedeaux said. "Everybody's staying real quiet because if you draw too much attention to something you're interested in, people will say, ‘Aha! We'll get the money out of that, and put it into this.'"

Budget fights tend to focus on the two biggest chunks of state spending: education and Medicaid.

True to form, last year's budget negotiations stalled repeatedly as legislators waited for Congress to pass a funding bill to extend the higher levels of federal Medicaid funding from the 2008 stimulus bill. When Congress' own dawdling pushed state budget negotiations into April, the Legislature passed a contingency plan that assigned higher funding to K-12 education if the additional federal dollars ever arrived.

Congress finally extended the Medicaid funds in August along with a federal education jobs bill that funneled $97 million directly to Mississippi school districts.

In his budget recommendation for 2012, Gov. Haley Barbour assumed that school districts would have $65 million of the education jobs money remaining for next year. The assumption allowed him to claim that his plan would keep K-12 education funding level with the 2011 fiscal year (which corresponds to the current school year). House Education Committee Chairman Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, says that Barbour's boast of level funding is misleading.

"I know what he's claiming, but he's not telling the truth," Brown said. "He's counting $65 million of that as though he was giving it to them himself, or as though the state was giving it to them. ... That (federal) money goes directly to the schools. We have no control over that money, so we don't know (how much they have). They can spend that money this year and it would not be available next year."

Dedeaux, the House Medicaid Committee Chairman, says that the big question for Medicaid is how to compensate for the lost federal match enhancement.

"All through this recession, the federal government has come to the aid of the states with a stimulus enhancement that has helped us with our Medicaid budget," Dedeaux said.

"In other words, the federal government gave us an enhancement on our match rate. But that match rate is going away. That money will have to be replaced with more state dollars."

Dedeaux's desire to make up for the lost federal money with state funds runs counter to Barbour's proposal to raid Medicaid for $100 million in the 2012 fiscal year.

While acknowledging the potential conflict, Dedeaux reserved judgment on Barbour's plan. "The governor's budget proposal for Medicaid was a half a page in his executive budget (recommendation)," Dedeaux said. "(The plan to cut $100 million) is a couple sentences in a half a page document; it's not a very detailed proposal. He's making some suggestions, but he hasn't put any details out there."

Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, has said that he is considering introducing a bill to eliminate the requirement that those reapplying for Medicaid eligibility meet face-to-face with a state Medicaid official. Barbour touted the requirement as a way to reduce fraud, and its passage was a key legislative victory for him in 2005.

Critics, including the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan think tank, maintain that it does not reduce fraud but does block eligible families from receiving coverage if they cannot make the annual meetings.

Barbour's budget plan is especially uncharitable to agencies whose missions he declared "outside the core function of government." Those include the Mississippi Library Commission, the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Educational Television Authority, the official name for Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Each would receive a 20 percent cut under the governor's budget plan.

The legislative budget recommendation, by contrast, only recommends a 2.9 percent cut to the Arts Commission and a 1.15 percent reduction for the Library Commission.

Barbour recommended slashing the MPB budget by 20 percent permanently, saying that the agency needed to generate more of its own funding from non-state sources.

"Mississippi taxpayers should not continue subsidizing a television and radio network," Barbour said in the statement accompanying his budget proposal. "This decrease should begin a drawdown in funding for MPB that will ultimately result in its operating entirely on private donations and advertising revenues, except for educational programming used by and prepared for MDE."

The Legislature's version only calls for an 8 percent cut, saving the state $605,214.

Leaving Schools Alone
The Legislature may handle fewer education bills not directly related to funding this year, Brown said.

Over the past four years, lawmakers have overhauled the state's standardized testing system, given the Mississippi Department of Education more control over failing schools. It also transformed the annual report card for schools and school districts, and introduced an option for failing schools to morph into something resembling charter schools.

"We need to give some of these bills we've passed already a chance to work," Brown said. "We've done a lot the last three or four years, and we need to give schools a little breather here and assimilate what we've done."

That said, Brown said that he expects to introduce a full-scale charter school bill this year. Traditionally, charter schools are privately operated institutions that receive a "charter" from a state education agency allowing them to receive public funds on a per-student basis. Charter schools represent a deal between the state and the operator: In return for increased flexibility in curriculum, school schedules and administration, the charter operator pledges that its students will perform at a required level on state assessments.

Charters in that traditional mode have met with stiff opposition from much of the Legislative Black Caucus. The bill that passed last year was a watered-down version of the a charter law, creating a path for schools to become "New Start" schools with a board made up of parents.

A bill promoting comprehensive sex education—as opposed to abstinence-only—in schools is also likely pop up again, as it has the past few years. Last year, Rep. Alyce Clarke, D-Jackson, sponsored a bill to establish a pilot sex-education program in public schools, but the measure died in committee. The Mississippi ACLU expects Clarke to submit a similar measure again this year. Currently, Mississippi school districts adopt their own sex-education policies. None have formally adopted a non-abstinence-only program, despite evidence from a 2007 federally commissioned study by Mathematica Policy Research Center that students in abstinence-only programs are no more likely to abstain from sex than peers not in such a program.

The House and Senate education committees may see more ambitious legislation come from conservative lawmakers. The Mississippi Tea Party's 2011 legislative platform includes a plank for restoring control of schools to local districts, effectively doing away with oversight by MDE. Brown scoffed at the idea.

"If local school districts were doing a good job now, we'd have better schools," Brown said. "Can you imagine what they would do without any oversight? We've already got 20-something school districts that are in trouble. In the first place, you'd lose all the federal money that comes down, which is a huge amount. It's just crazy. They're certainly welcome to introduce it, but it's not going to go anywhere in my committee."

Justice Now?
Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said that he hopes to see the Legislature pass a bill relaxing the standard for inmates receiving medical releases. Currently, state law requires an inmate to be significantly ill with no hope of recovery before becoming eligible for a medical release. Opinions from the attorney general's office have interpreted that requirement as limiting medical release to terminally ill prisoners only.

Health care for seriously ill inmates is a major drain on the state's budget, Epps said. The state has placed 86 people on medical release, but many more could be eligible under a lower standard, he said.

"Prison, to me, is for people that we're afraid of," Epps said.

"Prison is for people that are dangerous or violent. ... If you're full grown, your medication is $3,000 a month and you're unable to work, you might not be terminal, but you're not going to hurt anybody."

"Instead of spending money out of state coffers on those types of inmates, then the federal government would pick them up on Medicare or Medicaid and at the same time let this person die with dignity," Epps added.

Epps said that he expects House Corrections Committee Chairman Bennett Malone, D-Carthage, to introduce the legislation.

For the fifth year, the Mississippi ACLU will make a push to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies, Executive Director Nsombi Lambright said. In 2009, the ACLU supported a bill that would have re-enfranchised people with felony convictions in 2011, after the terms of most state legislators had expired. The bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

Reform bills are also planned for juvenile justice. Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, who chairs the House Juvenile Justice Committee, is planning to introduce a bill aimed at preventing the automatic diversion of juveniles with disciplinary problems to alternative schools.

"Right now, in some school districts, kids who have gone through a rehabilitative program (at a youth detention center or the state's Oakley Training School) are then punished by being placed immediately in the alternative school without any sort of individual review," Southern Poverty Law Center Deputy Legal Director Sheila Bedi said. "The alternative schools are a punitive environment, so the child's getting doubly punished."

The Mississippi Youth Justice Project, a watchdog group under the SPLC, is also pushing for a bill to address a quasi-military training program for juveniles incarcerated at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. The privately operated prison, which houses juveniles tried and convicted as adults, is the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation and a class-action lawsuit filed by MYJP. Bedi said that the program is ripe for the kinds of physical abuse alleged in the lawsuit.

"They're forced to exercise and march and do all the boot-camp-like exercises, but it's not done with folks with any real military training," Bedi said. "It's done on an ad-hoc basis, and as a result it creates a lot of opportunities for abuses."

Bedi said that she expects Banks to introduce the Walnut Grove bill as well.

While looking out for the big issues likely to dominate the news industry over the length of the session, home-grown politicos may also want to entertain themselves with individual bills filed this year. The chances of a bill actually surviving both chambers, their respective committees, and getting a signature from the governor are slim to non-existent, but that doesn't mean the bills can't inspire some form of constituent reaction prior to their death rattle.

The House already has plenty of unlikely survivors to choose from, such as Jackson Democrat Rep. Cecil Brown's House Bill 1, which would move the elections for state officers to Saturday instead of Tuesday, offering, perhaps, the possibly of more voter access to the polls.

Other bills will seek to inoculate businesses from lawsuits, such as Chism's House 36, which makes the plaintiff liable for a defendant's court costs if the defendant prevails. Other bills aim to please religious constituents, such as Picayune Republican Rep. Mark Formby's House Bill 60, which prohibits schools from discriminating against religious students seeking a forum in which to share their religion, or who choose to write about their religious convictions in homework or in class work.

Several bills are looking to restrict the use of electronic devices while driving. Look for at least five of those this year.

There will also be plenty of bills of a more progressive bent, such as bills looking to open the field for renewable energy development, either through state tax incentives or through some other means, as well as bills attacking the Mississippi Division of Medicaid's "face-to-face" requirement for determining Medicaid eligibility. Monticello Democrat Rep. Bob Evans is attacking "face-to-face" personally with House Bill 110, which removes the requirement for a personal visit with a state agent to qualify for benefits.

The legislative session looks to be an active one this year, so expect to actively participate if you want to get the most out of it or maybe even influence it.

Follow Mississippi legislative news with the JFP Daily. Sign up free at http://www.jfpdaily.com.

Previous Comments

ID

161476

Comment

I remember not too long ago the Jackson Free Press' cover story regarding Mississippi being one of only four states not prosecuting animal abuse as a felony. I was wondering why, in your 2011 Mississippi Legislative Preview, you did not include hopeful legislation being brought to the Senate and House in 2011 that would make domestic cat and dog abuse a felony. Having already passed the Senate last year, Greg Ward, state representative from Tippah County (Ripley), the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, failed to bring this legislation to his House Agriculture Committee; therefore postponing any hopeful vote until this year. The Mississippi Farm Bureau claims that a felony cruelty law protecting dogs and cats could somehow impact farming, yet livestock is already protected by a first offense felony cruelty law. The cover story ran around the time that the then City of Canton's Animal Control Officer, Alfonso Esco faced charges of killing over 100 (possibly up to 200) dogs and dumping their bodies in various remote areas outside of Canton. However, the Madison County Prosecutor, Allen Phillips, was apparently satisfied with Alonzo being sentenced to only 120 hours of community service and having 30 days to pay $1320 in fines and court costs. The 120 days in jail that Esco could have served was suspended. Alfonso is the cousin of Fred Esco, Jr., Mayor of Canton from 2002 – 2009.

Author

Andy Coffin

Date

2011-01-06T11:24:38-06:00

ID

161477

Comment

There's a lot of stuff that didn't get in, yet, Andy. We're covering the Legislature every day. Don't worry: There's time. ;-) And there are no bigger animal lovers than this crowd. BUT, I do think it makes sense to pay attention to the issue that it is unlikely that legislation to make animal cruelty a felony is not likely to move ahead if we don't make the law harder on men who abuse women. This was pointed out to me by folks up there fighting for stronger domestic-abuse laws. We need to push for both.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2011-01-06T11:33:55-06:00

ID

161478

Comment

... now don't forget the possibly less reported women abusing men. Much like when a young girl is sexualized/molested by a male of age it is, rightfully so, looked at as a monsterous act. Yet when the roles are reversed, at least from my side of the fence, it's often looked at by a much less critical eye if not a congratulatory one.

Author

Andy Coffin

Date

2011-01-06T12:03:18-06:00

ID

161481

Comment

Of course, there are examples of women physically abusing men. But it is overwhelmingly a male-violence issue, and it doesn't help to try to falsely equalize it -- not if we're going to tackle the issue head on.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2011-01-06T13:37:04-06:00

ID

161483

Comment

Funny: Just popped up in my Twitter feed. Apropos: " The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." ~ Aristotle

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2011-01-06T14:03:43-06:00