Jackson Free Press

What seemed like a hundred House Appropriations Committee members, their staff members and others crammed into a room built for half that number this morning at the Capitol to sift through a telephone book-size legislative budget report.

Their charge, according to state Rep. Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville: to keep Mississippi from falling off a cliff and into an abyss, budgetarily speaking.

Representatives from the state's Legislative Budget Office outlined several challenges facing lawmakers, who have to pass a budget before the session ends the first week of May. These include replacing $536.8 million in non-recurring funds, including budget contingency funds ($276.5 million), re-appropriated FY 2011 Medicaid funds ($174.8 million), health care expendable funds ($60.1 million), and excess loan program and project funds ($14.6 million).

To shore up these losses, the LBO proposes deleting funding for all vacant positions as well as deleting 4,105 vacant jobs, reducing travel and contractual services, deferring equipment purchases, using available cash balances and supplementing state support.

The report also listed priorities as adequately funding critical areas of state budget, creating a budget that call for the least amount of non-recurring funds possible and maintaining state reserves for FY 2014 to address the loss of FY 2013 non-recurring funds.

Here are the highlights from the LBO report:

General Fund Budget Recommendation

• $4.6 billion in general funds for fical-year 2013
• $66.1 million more than FY 2012 appropriated
• $1.4 percent more than FY 2012 appropriated

State Support Recommendation

• $5.4 billion in state support for FY 2013
• $127.4 million less than FY 2012 appropriated
• 2.3 percent less than FY 2012

State Support for Top 10 Budgets (change from FY 2012)

• K-12 Education: $2.2 billion (-.06 percent)
• Medicaid: $710 million (-6.9 percent)
• Debt Service: $384.1 million (No change)
• Institutions of Higher Learning: $688.1 million (-1.9 percent)
• Community Colleges: $233.3 percent
• Corrections: $303.1 million -2.8 percent percent
• Mental Health: $249.3 million (No Change)
• Human Services: $122.5 million (-2.8 percent)
• Homestead Exemption: $81.1 million (No Change)
• Public Safety: $62.2 million (-15.9 percent)