Miss. Legislature: Top session issues (Feb. 28)
Top legislative issues
1.Tax cuts. This will likely be the overarching issue for the remainder of the 2015 session. Republican Speaker Philip Gunn wants to eliminate the state’s personal income tax and give a break to the masses. Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves wants to help businesses by eliminating the corporate franchise tax and giving breaks to small businesses, with much smaller cuts for individuals. Republicans and Democrats battled over tax cuts last week. Now Republicans and Republicans will battle over the competing plans.
2. Education. As focus shifts from the budget back to general bills, more battle looms over measures to delay the state’s third-grade literacy requirements for a year and proposals to kill, maim or just tweak and rename national Common Core education standards. A measure to provide vouchers for parents of special-needs children on private schools and services will come before the full House, where it died last year from bipartisan opposition. Public education advocates are fighting the measure.
3. Transparency and reform. A Senate bill requiring public transparency for public hospitals appears to be on life support in the House. The hospital lobby is fighting it; the GOP House leadership said to be lukewarm. And even as former corrections chief Chris Epps pleaded guilty last week to a kickback scheme, House leaders said special interests and agency bureaucrats are working on the Senate to weaken or kill a strong House reform measure that would crack down on no-bid government contracts.
The good and the bad
Good week: House Speaker Philip Gunn. Gunn had a tough row to hoe to garner a three-fifths vote to pass his mega tax cut bill last week. It may not have been pretty — the floor debate got a little raucous — but he managed to pick up 18 Democratic votes and pass it with room to spare.
Bad week: Legislative Democrats. In the minority in both chambers and dealing with caucus shakiness from election-year politics, Democrats caved on tax-cut proposals in both the House and Senate after putting up only a mild fight. But they will have another chance or two before final passage.
At a glance
This week: Tuesday is the deadline for House and Senate committees to pass general bills (not tax or spending) received from the other chamber.
Of note: Singing River Health System retirees, threatened by a pension crisis, rallied at the Capitol on Tuesday in support of a bill to open public hospital meetings to the public.
By the numbers: Governor: $79 million. Senate: $380 million to $400 million. House: $1.7 billion. — amount of tax cuts being proposed by each this session.