On Dec. 20, Haley Barbour stepped to the podium on the 18th floor of the Walter Sillers office building to make his final budget recommendation to reporters—and started hacking away at state agencies.

Barbour, whom the state Constitution requires to submit a budget proposal each year he serves as governor, showed no mercy as he called for trimming back funding for education, health care, conservation, agriculture, economic development, prisons and the arts.

He proposed reductions for the state's legislative and judicial branches, too, and even recommended spending cuts for the governor's office and mansion for his successor, fellow Republican Phil Bryant.

In a few days, the conservative bulwark Barbour leaves the governor's chair after eight years reportedly to return the BGR Group, the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm he co-founded in the early 1990s, while Mississippi sorts through our budget mess back here on the home front.

There's no guarantee that the Mississippi Legislature, which went into session Tuesday, Jan. 3, will ever vote on a budget that looks like Barbour's $5.5 billion plan, but the parties likely will draw battle lines along the same philosophical boundaries that Barbour has already staked out.

And Barbour's party will probably get a lot of what they want. In case you haven't heard, Republicans now control Mississippi. They control the treasury, which means they control the disbursement and investment of state funds. Republicans control the agriculture and commerce departments, which means they control what we eat. They control the audit department, which means Republicans have authority over how government entities use public money. They control the secretary of state's office, which oversees elections and regulates business in Mississippi.

A Republican lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate, which means they control which laws that body considers. A Republican occupies the governor's seat, which means they have the final say over what bills become laws. Starting in January, and for the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans will also control the state House of Representatives.

The GOP literally controls the horizontal and the vertical: As part of his budget recommendation, Barbour called for pulling the plug on state support for Mississippi Public Broadcasting, starting with a 15 percent reduction to the agency that funds MPB in the next fiscal year with the hope that MPB can become self-funding.

No matter what political parties say about the merits of keeping power balanced, it's the kind of opportunity that makes political parties salivate. But given the formidability of Mississippi's challenges, it's also the kind of situation that should terrify them. Now that they have absolute control, Republicans must govern. The responsibility of turning around Mississippi's first-in-everything-bad reputation falls squarely to their shoulders.

"They've never governed, and we have," said State Rep. Steve Holland, a Plantersville Democrat, who's been a committee chairman for 22 of the 28 years he's served in the Legislature. "Now, the jury is out on how we've governed, but I could talk to you all day long about all the progress we've made since I walked in the door."

Now that Republicans have control, the conventional thinking is that the GOP will run roughshod with its agenda, turning every conservative fantasy into reality.

Or maybe not. Both political parties have indicated a desire to play nicely together, and both sides seem resigned that more will have to be done with less.

In mid-December, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee passed a framework for a spending plan that was surprisingly free of acrimony. Whether the fact that the two sides were able to agree on a working budget plan is an indication of a coming harmonious relationship when the Legislature convenes in January or if they just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge before the winter break remains to be seen.

What is clear is that Republicans will have the next five months to prove that they're as good at running Mississippi as they are at winning elections here.

The Playing Field
In mid-December, new lawmakers gathered in Jackson for a two-day orientation organized by Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. Marty Wiseman, director of the Stennis Institute for Government at Mississippi State University, has participated in the event for years.

"I can tell from this group already, they're ready to get to work," he said. "It's always funny to watch new legislators. They want to get to work at 6 o' clock in the morning and work until 9 at night and just do stuff. There are going to be some very unhappy campers."

If anyone is concerned about the dominant party ramming legislation through the process, Wiseman said they should stop worrying.

The first month of the session will move slowly as lawmakers get a feel for the capitol and learn their way around the building and through the lawmaking process. The first thing that had to happen was electing a new speaker on Jan. 3. That person is Rep. Philip Gunn of Clinton, whom the caucus elected in a closed-door meeting in November.

Next comes the selection of committee chairpersons, who have the power to let bills die or send them to the floor for votes. Many of the chairpersons will also be new, and they will have to learn their role in the process.

"It'll be a whole lot clumsier getting off the ground than people expect it to be. People think Republicans will come in firing with both barrels. The sheer task of getting organized takes several weeks to get off the ground," Wiseman said.

In addition to just seeing new faces in leadership positions, there will be a noticeable ideological shift in the committee heads as well, Wiseman said.

"You get the idea it's a Republican atmosphere. Democrats, even when they are in charge they tend to be fairly free-spirited, and sometimes you never know which direction they're going to head. Republicans seem to be a whole lot more organized and a whole lot more regimented by the leadership," Wiseman said.

Since Election Day, Republican leaders have repeated the mantra that under the GOP, the Legislature will pass strong conservative legislation.

Wiseman continued: "I would say you are going to get a typically conservative Republican attitude that is going to permeate all legislation. It's going to take a very Republican tone."

Holland agreed with Wiseman's assessment, adding that Republicans' desire to pursue a decidedly conservative agenda will be a distraction early on.

"I think we're going to have to struggle to focus on the real issues that are facing this state," he said. "We're probably going to be hit with a barrage of things like drug-testing for welfare recipients, immigration issues and possibly more attacks on the rights of the voter.

"We're going to be thrown more pro-life issues if that's possible. We'll face Proposition 26 legislatively, I'm sure. Things like that will take up a lot of our time but will not produce a lot of meat and potatoes for our citizenry."

  Barbour's budget, which he characterized as a "return to discipline," is more or less a harbinger for partisan battles to come over many of the issues Holland outlined: redistricting, immigration, education, health care and implementing a voter-identification law that voters approved in November.

During past sessions, the Republican-led state Senate passed bills to allow privately run charter schools to open in Mississippi as well as an immigration bill modeled after controversial laws in Arizona and Alabama that would have required local law enforcement to investigate people they suspect are in the country illegally.

State Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, who authored the immigration bill, said Republican lawmakers will likely revive both issues this year.

"With the Republican takeover in the House, some of these types of conservative bills that have been passed previously in the Senate and have either been altered dramatically or just killed entirely in the House will get a second look with this newly configured leadership," Fillingane told the JFP.

House Democrats shot down both the immigration bill and have repeatedly balked at the idea of establishing charter schools, arguing that doing so would suck resources away from traditional public schools.

The Battle Lines
For both parties, living within the allowance the state budget provides will be tricky. Gov. Barbour and the Joint Legislative Budget Committee in November adopted a tentative plan for the 2013 fiscal year, which begins July 2012 and is based on only a 0.7 percent increase in revenue. Every year, ideological battle lines are drawn over health care, especially mental-health services and Medicaid, and education. This year will be no different.

"If we have a fight over funding, it'll be over education and health care," said state Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson.

From the looks of Barbour's proposal, that funding fight seems more of a matter of when not if. In total, the Barbour budget reduced higher-education funding by 2.8 percent to $861 million from $886 million in fiscal year 2012. This included approximately $5.9 million to community colleges (Barbour added that like public broadcasting, community-college athletic programs should some day fund themselves).

Meanwhile, Barbour whacked public health by 4.3 percent to $51.4 million from $53.7 million the previous year.

Even though he said health care got a "screwing" in Barbour's budget, Holland said he doesn't intend to be much of a thorn in the side of the new Republican leadership in the House—as long as they don't "take the meat ax" to hammer down spending on social safety-net programs like Medicaid.

Holland, who planned to vote for Speaker-designee Gunn, said he hopes that the new speaker will use his expertise from chairing the health-care appropriations subcommittee for 22 years. "I'm going to with every ounce of conciliatory leadership I can muster, get along with these Republicans—they won. I wouldn't say fair and square, but they won, and I hope they succeed. But when it comes to the least and most vulnerable among us, they've got me to contend with before they put the dagger in their heart," Holland said.

Late in the year, Barbour made signaled a need to inject the flow of revenue to the state. In November, he wrote a letter to U.S. Sens. Mike Enzi and Lamar Alexander, Republicans from Wyoming and Tennessee, respectively, expressing support for a bill they authored that would allow states to collect sales tax on online purchases.

"Fifteen years ago, when e-commerce was still a nascent industry, it made sense to exempt startups like Amazon.com from collecting and remitting sales taxes in states where they had no facilities," Barbour wrote. "Today, e-commerce has grown, and there is simply no longer a compelling reason for government to continue giving online retailers special treatment over small businesses."

Barbour said that states should be allowed to collect taxes however they see fit, and warned that failure to "level the playing field" could put Main Street retail operators out of business.

That Mississippi's notoriously anti-tax Republican governor called for what some consider a tax increase understandably raised eyebrows and distanced Barbour from notable members of his own party. Phil Bryant, Barbour's lieutenant governor and successor, balked at the idea.

Barbour also noted a state Department of Revenue report showing Mississippi's November revenue collections estimates fell below the estimate by 1.5 percent, or almost $4.9 million. A few days later, he sent a letter to legislative leaders and the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, whom he cautioned against relying on a $20 million pharmaceutical legal settlement to shore up the state budget.

"I urge you to not be misled to think this $20 million in legal-settlement funds represents a windfall for budgeting purposes; it does not. The state must repay the majority of these funds back to the federal government. The federal government is entitled to reimbursement of its share of overpayments. I urge you not to include these funds in your legislative budget recommendation for FY 2013," Barbour wrote.

Anticipating a budget fight with House Republicans, David Baria, a Democrat from Bay St. Louis, said lawmakers could essentially face the decision to cut teachers or raise local taxes to make ends meet but is skeptical that any kind of tax increase will make it onto the House floor.

"I don't think there's anything that we're going to vote on that's going to raise revenue," Baria said.

Barbour's successor has already indicated that he's cold to the idea. "To say it is time to raise taxes on the items that we're buying on the Internet now, in the worst economy in modern history—it's just something that I'm not in favor of," Bryant told WTOK-TV in Meridian.

Some Republican legislators like Rita Martinson of Madison think lawmakers should at least debate the issue in committee. "It's not fair for existing businesses to be burdened with collecting the taxes and have their competitors online not have to charge tax; however, I think people benefit by not paying taxes online, so there's a fine line that we'll have to cross on that," Martinson said.

The Conflicts
Eventually, Republicans will hit their stride and start behaving like the party that's in charge. When they do, a number of Democratic-allied groups fear that Republicans will proceed with putting in place a radical conservative agenda.

As part of its 2011 legislative agenda, the Mississippi Tea Party outlined issues it expects the Legislature to address: "illegal immigration," state sovereignty, education reform, "unconstitutional welfare programs" and performance-based budgeting.

The prominence of the Tea Party and other far-right activist groups has blacks worried. In early December, about 300 people met for the Black Leadership Summit to discuss problems facing African Americans in Mississippi, but foremost on everyone's mind were the results of the recent election.

"Within 30 days, we're going to see a radical restructuring of state government like we've never seen before," Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told the summit crowd at the Jackson Convention Center.

"Within 30 days, it's going to look like 1962," Johnson added.

Johnson, along with several other prominent blacks, believes that the state could return to an era when whites wielded power and blacks were relegated to second-class citizenship.

In a state that already trails other states in a number of quality-of-life areas, and where blacks lag behind their white counterparts in many of those same areas, various Republican-led branches of state government could make life difficult for African Americans in the years to come.

Civil-rights groups fought unsuccessfully, albeit vociferously, against the statewide ballot measure that will require citizens to brandish a state-issued ID card when they vote that they believed sought to quash voting by blacks, Latinos and other groups of Democrat-leaning voters.

The issue passed and is now the subject of a U.S. Justice Department review. Fillingane, the state senator who led the push to place the initiative on the ballot, said voter ID and state legislative redistricting—something the divided Legislature failed to accomplish last year and one of the first orders of business of the new session—have to pass U.S. Department of Justice muster.

Fillingane noted that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a similar Indiana law from which Mississippi's proposal was "basically cut and pasted."

But it's not just blacks wringing their hands. Advocates working on education, mental health, domestic violence and juvenile justice issues worry that funding for vital safety-net programs could be cut out of the budget.

"We're going to push for things that are important to us," Rep. Brown said of the Democrats. "If we are besieged by this Tea Party legislation that we perceive to be radical, we will push back against that."

With just a slim six-vote lead in the house, Democrats can clog legislation and have some veteran members who know how to use the rules, the Stennis Institute's Wiseman said. "You have a very skillful black caucus. Their numbers are too big to ignore. There'll be a role for them."

Most notably, Democrats will have an opportunity to make their presence felt on the budget. To pass a spending bill, a majority of House and Senate members must agree, which means they will need some Democratic votes as well.

If a particularly objectionable budget plan comes to the floor, the minority party can slow the process by having a bill read in full the maximum number of times allowed by the rules or request a time-consuming roll-call vote.

Baria, who switched from the Senate to the House this election, said Democrats should stick together and that he is willing to do anything in his power to block a budget he thinks is too extreme.

The new senator added that the composition of the House won't deter him from introducing insurance-reform legislation such as a policy holders' Bill of Rights to protect against unfair insurance-claim practices that he said were widespread after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his and thousands of other homes on the Coast.

Progressive-minded Mississippians fear that a far-right agenda would include redrawing a more GOP-friendly electoral map when the Legislature takes up redistricting again next year, consolidation of school districts and even more inadequately funded public schools.

State Rep. Kelvin Buck, a Democrat from Holly Springs, doesn't believe that becoming more combative with Republicans is necessarily in Democrats' best interests, though. "I don't see how much more contentious it could be," Buck said.

The Unknowns
One of the biggest unknowns going into the session is the relationship between Phil Bryant, Speaker-designee Gunn and incoming Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, who presides over the Senate. The three Republican leaders will be intimately involved in passing legislation.

Wiseman said fences might need mending between Bryant, a close ally of Senate Pro Tem Billy Hewes, and Reeves, who defeated Hewes in the Republican primary contest for lieutenant governor.

"I don't think the Republicans are going to be quite as lock stepped as they were under Haley (Barbour) because he did all their thinking for them for eight years," Holland told the JFP.

Gunn and what his role will be is the bigger question mark.

Martinson called him the leader of the House conservative caucus. "Philip is a very even-tempered, mild man, but he's got a backbone of steel," she said. "He's quiet, but I don't think he will rule as an autocrat. I think he'll be more like a moderator. Now, he's not a moderate person—don't get me mistaken on that."

With majorities in both houses and the governor's mansion, it's safe to assume that Republicans have an opportunity to impose whatever vision of Mississippi they want.

"We probably won't be able to agree on what the problems are," Rep. Brown said. "They're not going to be able to come in and wave a magic wand to fix everything any more than we were."

Maybe it was holiday spirit, but members of both parties said in December that enough common ground exists to do the hard work of running the state without being disagreeable.

"The state of Mississippi has been here a long time. We have periods where things go well and periods where things don't go so well. The majority of the members will be Republicans and that's fine; they won the election. I'm sure they'll do whatever they think is the right thing to do," Brown said.

Baria, who said everyone at the Capitol wants to create jobs in the state and see Mississippi prosper regardless of party identification, put it more plainly:

"I'm an optimist; I look to be pleasantly surprised."

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