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Barely three days into session, the Mississippi House of Representatives passed a bill that would fully fund the teacher pay hike passed last session.

House Bill 1 will appropriate $18,446,578 to ensure that the $1,500 pay hike for the state’s 40,991 public school teachers is fully funded through the end of the fiscal year (June 30).

The deficit appropriation bill was passed out of the appropriations committee Wednesday with a vote by the full chamber on Thursday.

The legislature appropriated $58,442,743 in last year’s session based on calculations submitted by the MDE. Those original calculations said there were 31,157 teaching positions. The actual number was 40,991 and the raise will cost taxpayers $76.9 million annually.

The Mississippi Department of Education said in July it conducted an additional review of the number of state-funded teaching positions. MDE officials found that there were additional positions eligible for the increase that weren’t in the Mississippi Student Information System as ones funded by the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the funding formula that determines how state funds are distributed to the school districts. Only MAEP-funded positions were eligible for the pay hike.

The problem lies in the antiquated MSIS system, which has issues with its interoperability with district systems for data. The issues forced MDE to recount the number of raise-eligible teaching positions by hand.

The legislature appropriated $500,000 as part of MDE’s appropriation to start the process on upgrading it.

The expanded list of teaching positions in addition to classroom teachers, counselors, teacher assistants, and librarians includes specialized positions such as dyslexia therapists, audiologists, and psychologists.

Since 2000, Mississippi teachers have received three pay increases beyond annual step increases. In 2000, a $337 million plan was enacted over a six-year span. In 2014, a two-year, $100 million plan passed by the legislature increased teacher pay $1,500 in the first year and $1,000 in second.

City of Jackson officials are hoping the state will provide $3 million to purchase additional crime prevention surveillance cameras in the city.

The city council passed a motion to request the bond money from the state on Tuesday, according to WLBT.

The city currently has 30 cameras in operation. These were purchased through a $200,000 grant. The Real Time Crime Center allows the city to monitor activity on the streets.

If the city receives the new funding, they would have four to six people monitor cameras around the clock throughout the city. Currently, the cameras are located in south Jackson.

Mississippi’s certificate of need program needs some reform, but the legislature has been largely unsuccessful in the last four years in changing the system in a meaningful way.

Mississippi is one of 35 states that require a certificate of need for healthcare providers. They must receive approval from the state Department of Health to build a new facility, add beds or diagnostic equipment to an existing facility, or even when a capital project goes over budget.

Every major attempt at reform in the past four years for Mississippi’s certificate of need program has failed. Former state Rep. Mark Baker (R-Brandon) tried three times to completely eliminate the state’s CON regime in 2015, 2016 and  2017 and all three bills died in committee without a floor vote.  

Former state Rep. Robert Foster (R-Hernando) also filed a reform bill in 2016 that would’ve removed most health care services and equipment from CON oversight. It also failed in committee.

The only CON reform passed by the legislature and signed into law in the last four years was a bill authored by state Sen. Josh Harkins (R-Flowood) that revised the time requirements and required public notices be issued before CON approval.

CONs originated from the National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974 that was signed into law by then-President Gerald Ford. The goal was to curtail constant increases in federal health care spending by inexplicably regulating the number and services rendered by providers. 

One of the cost control measures was to require states to institute CON laws to regulate health care facilities, with Mississippi passing its CON law in 1979. 

The CON program in Mississippi regulates:

The way the process works is a provider submits an application for a new CON or an amendment to an existing CON. Officials use a document called the State Health Plan to determine whether to authorize the CON. 

This state health plan determines the health care needs of the state’s population, a classic case of central planning.

Where the CON hurts most is rural hospitals. According to a national report of rural hospitals, 31 of Mississippi’s 64 rural hospitals are at high financial risk. Nationally, 21 percent are listed in danger of closing their doors. 

Scholars at the free-market Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that patients were more likely in states with a CON regime to have to travel outside their county for care. Using 25 years of data and controlling for factors that might influence the numbers of hospitals, states with CONs have 30 percent fewer rural hospitals per 100,000 residents.

Eliminating the CON could also reduce healthcare costs, according to some research.

A 2016 study by the federal National Institutes of Health showed that Medicaid and Medicare spending per enrollee in nursing homes declined in all states during the study, but the rate of decline was higher in states without CON policies. 

The study examined Medicare and Medicaid spending on nursing homes and home health care in 44 states that didn’t change their CON laws from 1992 to 2009.

The Mississippi State Board of Health issued a resolution opposing medical marijuana. The secretary of state's office, today, officially confirmed that supporters gathered the necessary signatures for the initiative to be on the ballot in November.

The ballot initiative could make Mississippi the 34th state in the country with medical marijuana.

The state Board of Health, which would be tasked with regulating the program, approved a resolution to express their "strong opposition to the ballot initiative."

The resolution said that, "there are numerous known harms from the use of cannabis products including addiction, mental illness, increased accidents, and smoking related harms...the proposed amendment to the Mississippi State Constitution amendment would allow the use of marijuana for a very broad number of medical indications...the consumption of any combustible inhaled product is harmful to individual health...routine marijuana consumption has numerous known harms and is contrary to the mission of public health."

The Board also said that this program would expand their department beyond capacity and harm its function.

Gov. Phil Bryant, who has been a vocal opponent of the initiative since day one, also weighed in:

If a majority support the initiative, medical marijuana will become legal in the state within a year.

The state of Mississippi continues to see an increase in spending per student.

Last year, Mississippi, including state, local, and federal sources, spent $10,421 per student, according to the Mississippi Department of Education. This total is based on average daily attendance, which was 432,198. The year prior, Mississippi spent $10,034 per student, the first time the state eclipsed $10,000 per student. 

Spending per student has continued to increase in Mississippi. In 2012, the state was spending $8,920 per student. It increased to $9,209 in 2013, $9,394 in 2014, $9,704 in 2015, and $9,781 in 2016. 

Simultaneous to the increase in per-student-expenditures, the average daily attendance has also decreased each year. While that number was slightly above 432,000 this year, it was 461,000 in 2012. This represents a drop of more than 6 percent. Enrollment numbers decreased again for the 2019-2020 school year, and, presuming education funding is not reduced, the per- student-average will only continue to increase.

Mississippi is one step closer to medical marijuana after the secretary of state's office officially qualified Ballot Initiative 65 for the November, 2020 ballot. 

Last fall, Mississippians for Compassionate Care, the organization that had been collecting signatures for the initiative, submitted 105,686 certified signatures of registered voters to the secretary of state. Since that time, the secretary of state’s office has been confirming that the requirements have been met. 

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 33 states, with Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah adopting ballot initiatives in 2018. In 2019, legislatures in Georgia and Texas approved medical marijuana, though the rollout has not been finalized in either state. 

What would medical marijuana look like in Mississippi?

If the ballot initiative is approved by voters in November, marijuana would be legal for those with a debilitating medical condition and would have to be authorized by a physician and receive it from a licensed treatment center.

Some of these conditions include:

If a physician concludes that a person suffers from a debilitating medical condition and that the use of medical marijuana may mitigate the symptoms or effects of the condition, the physician may certify the person to use medical marijuana by issuing a form as prescribed by the Mississippi Board of Health. The issuance of this form is defined in the proposal as a “physician certification” and is valid for 12 months, unless the physician specifies a shorter period of time.

That individual then becomes a qualified patient. After they do this, they present the physician certification to the Mississippi Department of Health and are issued a medical marijuana identification card. The ID card allows the patient to obtain medical marijuana from a licensed and regulated treatment center and protects the patient from civil and/or criminal sanctions in the event the patient is confronted by law enforcement officers. “Shopping” among multiple treatment centers is prevented through the use of a real-time database and online access system maintained by the Mississippi Department of Health.

The Mississippi Department of Health would regulate the cultivation of marijuana, processing, and being made available to patients. There would also be limits on how much marijuana a patient could obtain.

Medicaid expansion is likely dead on arrival in the Mississippi House of Representatives, but additional initiatives on addressing job creation and the worsening situation in the Department of Corrections are likely.

House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) said at a news conference Tuesday that he’s opposed to expanding Medicaid, but would be open to possible reforms and improvements to the program.

“I’m open minded and will listen to ideas, but in the traditional use of the term Medicaid expansion, no I am not for that,” Gunn said. “I’ve not had more people asking me to put more people on Medicaid.”

He also said workforce development and halting the emigration of recent college graduates to other states — a phenomena known as brain drain — is one of the priorities for the session for the House. 

He said he supports the legislature appropriating money to allow all of the state’s high school students to take the ACT Workkeys test, which measures foundational skills required for success in the workplace. 

The state already pays to have all public high school juniors and seniors take the ACT test, which uses four benchmarks to measure a student’s readiness for college work.

Gunn said he also supports the possibility of true dual-enrollment so high school students can receive credit for vocational tech classes taken at community colleges.

Corrections could be another issue for the House. A riot and escape from the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm resulted in a lockdown in prisons statewide. In the last 10 days, five inmates were killed in different state prisons, with three of the deaths coming at Parchman.

Gunn says the legislature is dependent on agency heads to keep them informed on issues in their departments. Gov.-elect Tate Reeves is in the process of searching for a new commissioner of corrections.

“Any agency, whether it’s the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Safety, the health department, they have agency heads,” Gunn said. “We are a legislature that doesn’t meet year round and they have these agency heads that are responsible for the day to day operations. 

“We trust the information they provide us and the decisions we make are only as good as the information we have. Hopefully we will have good lines of communications with the agency heads in the next four years and address all of them.”

On teacher pay, Gunn said that was a function of how much money was available. Last year, teachers received a $1,500 pay hike that will cost taxpayers $76.9 million annually.

According to the revenue estimates in the legislature’s proposed budget for fiscal 2021, there could be about $100 million in additional revenue for appropriators. 

“That’s not a one-time expense, that’s now and ever more,” Gunn said about a teacher pay raise. “We’ve got to factor in how much the citizens of this state can afford. The citizens of the state bear all of these expenses and we have to keep in mind what the citizens can afford and not overspend.” 

The American Conservative Union Foundation’s Center for Legislative Accountability has produced its 2019 report for every state’s legislature.  The report, similar to the one ACU has produced annually for members of Congress for nearly a half century, is designed to reflect how state legislators feel about the role of government in the lives of individual citizens. 

Spoiler alert, the Mississippi legislature did not fare well.

Conservatism, at its core, is a political philosophy based on the inherent rights of the individual and his/her natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It flows from the Lockean ideas enshrined in our founding documents that the role of government is to defend and protect our Life, Liberty, and Property. Thus, the votes of a conservative member of the legislature should reflect a commitment to limited government, free markets, and personal responsibility. On the whole, a conservative should be voting against bills that would expand the size, scope, or cost of government and for bills that would reduce taxes, regulations, and burdens on small and mid-sized businesses. 

The ACU Foundation report reviewed each piece of legislation voted on in both chambers of the legislature to produce average scores of each chamber as well as individual scores for each sitting member. In the previous session, Mississippi trailed only South Carolina as the most liberal legislature controlled by Republicans, according to ACUF’s Year in Review.

The Mississippi legislature’s overall conservative score continued to fall in the 2019 session (from 49.94 percent to 47.52 percent). 

“In the 2019 session, numerous Mississippi lawmakers fell trap to crony government spending programs, and unnecessary interference in the marketplace,”said Center for Legislative Accountability Director, Fred McGrath.  

The share of lawmakers earning awards varied by chamber, with just four Republican representatives and zero Republican senators earning awards. Democrat representatives earned an average score of 33 percent, slightly besting Democrat senators who earned an average of 32 percent. 

The top scores in the House belonged to Reps. Joel Bomgar (R-Madison), Dana Criswell (R-Olive Branch), Ashley Henley (R-Southaven), and Steve Hopkins (R-Southaven). The top score in the Senate belonged to Sen. Michael Watson (R-Pascagoula), the incoming secretary of state.

ACU Foundation researched and selected a range of bills before the Mississippi legislature that determined a member’s adherence to conservative principles. They selected bills that focused on Ronald Reagan’s philosophy of the “three-legged stool”: 1) fiscal and economic: taxes, budgets, regulation, spending, healthcare, and property; 2) social and cultural: 2nd amendment, religion, life, welfare, and education; and 3) government integrity: voting, individual liberty, privacy, and transparency. This wide range of issues gives citizens an accurate assessment that conveys which of Mississippi’s elected leaders best defend the principles of a free society: Life, Liberty, and Property.

Frankly, I’m not surprised by the results. I have to come to understand that too many members of the Mississippi legislature and too many citizens on the Magnolia State equate “Conservatism” with “Republicanism.” It’s simply not so. Conservatism is a philosophy and Republicanism is a party. It’s not enough to be a supporter of our Second Amendment, traditional family values, and Judeo Christian beliefs. Most members of the Mississippi legislature, and certainly virtually all Republicans, fit that description. In addition to those ideas, we also need representatives who will vote to preserve the proper role of government.

As citizens, we need to hold our elected representatives accountable to self-governance and insist that they each learn to say “nay.” A conservative will say “nay” to increasing spending, expanding government dependency, adding taxes, and increasing regulatory capture.

In 2019, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy decided to read every bill that made it out of committee from either chamber and to score each bill based on a simple “green, yellow, red” system. On our website, you can find a summary of every bill, which we do in real time as the bills comes out. Then, you’ll see what we think of the bill. If we think the bill expands the size, scope, or cost of government or weakens individual liberty, we’ll mark it “red.” If the bill improves competition and consumer choice or preserves liberty, we’ll mark it “green.” If we need more information or don’t consider the bill to be a meaningful action, we’ll make it “yellow.” We do this not only to aid members of the legislature, but also do give the public a chance to see if their own representative votes like a conservative, or only talks like one.

This year, citizens will be able to compare how often their own representative votes for Life, Liberty, and Property directly on the site. It’s a new feature for this session. We’ll be watching…and so will the ACU.

When people leave Mississippi, they don’t go empty handed. They take their jobs, financial assets, and tax revenue with them. 

Mississippi has lost $1.09 billion in wealth transfers to other states dating back to 2010. This is a change of negative 2 percent, ranking 30th nationwide, according to analysis of IRS data from the Illinois Policy Institute. Arkansas had a small decline of $287 million, while Louisiana lost $2.49 billion. 

Alabama ($471 million) and Tennessee ($7.14 billion) both had positive transfers of wealth. Florida had the highest wealth transfer, both in terms of actual dollars ($88.95 billion) and percentage gain (20%).

Wealth transfers and population shifts go hand-in-hand. 

Mississippi’s population declined by 4,871 last year. Mississippi and neighboring Louisiana, which saw a decrease of 10,896 residents, are the only states in the south to lose population over the past year. This is a continuing trend. Mississippi lost more than 3,000 residents the year prior. 

But every other southern state south of Virginia (not named Louisiana), had positive domestic migration numbers last year. Some smaller, like 0.8 in Arkansas, some larger, like 10.3 in South Carolina. This is the difference between a positive and negative wealth transfer for a state.

Mississippi is in a dangerous cycle, but it is one that can be corrected. There are policies the state can adopt that would put Mississippi ahead of the curve when it comes to national policy and positioning the state to be competitive nationwide.

For starters, Mississippi needs to move away from a desire to overregulate commerce and embolden government bureaucrats. Mississippi has more than 117,000 regulations that cut across every sector of the economy. A successful model to stem this growing tide would be a one-in, two-out policy where for every new regulation that is adopted, two have to be removed. If a regulatory policy is so important, let’s make the government prove it. 

The Trump administration adopted a similar executive order in 2017, and the numbers show we are actually seeing decreases greater than two-to-one, and these are not insignificant regulatory reductions. 

This could be particularly beneficial in healthcare and tech policy. No department regulates more than the Department of Health, but our goal should be a push toward free market healthcare reforms that encourage choice and competition. In tech policy, the state has the opportunity to be one of the first states to essentially open the door for innovation, rather than one where entrepreneurs need to seek permission from the state. If Mississippi wants to get in the technology world, and we are convinced this is essential, a permissionless innovation policy in healthcare would be a big step in the right direction. 

We should also not require people to receive permission from the state to work when they do move here. Open the door to productive citizens by allowing for universal recognition of licensing, following the path paved by Arizona. If you have been licensed in one state, that license should be good in Mississippi. Again, we could be ahead of the curve. 

At the same time, our occupational licensing regime should be reviewed. Today, 19 percent of Mississippians need a license to work. It was 5 percent in the 1950s. While there are some occupations where a license is obviously prudent, we’ve expanded into far too many occupations. 

This serves to lower competition and increase costs for consumers, while not providing those consumers with a better product. Occupational licensing is an example of how Mississippi misses the opportunity to grow her economy by acting in defensive ways to protect the slices of our economic pie for the well-connected when the reality is we could create a much bigger economic pie if we encouraged more creative disruption, competition, and risk-taking. 

Finally, Mississippi needs to shed its abundant reliance on government and the public sector. Whether for public assistance, grants, contracts, jobs, or specific tax breaks, the citizens and companies in Mississippi are too dependent on state government. And the state is too dependent on the federal government. We have the third highest level of economic dependence on federal grants-in-aid in the nation (43%) and the fourth highest level of our economy driven by the public sector in the country (55%). Politicians, state agency directors, and government bureaucrats cannot create the economic growth we need. They can, however, work together with our various representatives and create an environment that allows and encourages private economic activities. Ultimately, with such an environment, it will be the entrepreneurs, business owners, productive workers, creative disruptors, capitalists, managers, and consumers who deliver the economic growth we all seek. 

Mississippi can share the success of our neighbors. It will just take work. 

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