Jackson Free Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi teachers will get some sort of pay raise during the budget year that starts July 1, and so could a few thousand lower-paid state government employees.

The Highway Patrol will receive money to train a new group of state troopers, and a new state crime lab could get some of the equipment it needs.

The Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a complex funding formula for elementary and secondary schools, is likely to get at least as much money in the coming year as it's getting now — possibility a bit more.

Those were some of items the Legislature's top budget writers discussed in interviews Friday, but they wouldn't give specifics because the numbers were still in flux. Negotiators face a Saturday night deadline to agree on details of a roughly $6 billion budget for fiscal 2015.

"There's more agreement than there is disagreement," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville, said Friday in describing the budget discussions.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Eugene "Buck" Clarke, R-Hollandale, was equally upbeat.

"I couldn't point to any one item where there's a lot of disagreement hanging us up," Clarke said.

Negotiators will file more than 100 budget bills. If everything runs as scheduled, those will be sent to the full 122-member House and 52-member Senate for consideration Sunday and Monday. Bills that pass will go to Republican Gov. Phil Bryant.

The budget-writing process started last summer, when agencies submitted their spending requests. Bryant released his recommendations in November, and top lawmakers released theirs in December.

Clarke told reporters Friday that negotiators are looking at a raise for an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 state employees who earn $30,000 or less and haven't received one in the past four years. He said an amount hadn't been set.

Bryant has said the Highway Patrol is about 150 troopers short of its needs, plus 120 troopers are eligible to retire. Clarke said a trooper training school would cost about $6.9 million.

The three-month legislative session is scheduled to end by April 6.