Many people like to ring in the new year with fireworks. And in Mississippi, it is easier than many other places to buy and use fireworks.

You have probably noticed temporary firework stands set up near your house in the past couple weeks and that is because Mississippi has a defined selling period. Retailers can sell fireworks during the two busiest seasons; the current period from December 5 through January 2 and from June 15 through July 5. And what retailers can sell and you can purchase is largely wide open. 

But while state law provides for much freedom, many municipalities limit the use of fireworks in their city limits. Though not exhaustive, here is the rundown of whether fireworks are legal or illegal in Mississippi cities. 

Fireworks are legal in the following cities:

Bay St. Louis, Horn Lake, Jackson (as of 2011), Natchez, Nettleton, Waveland.

The use of fireworks are banned in the following cities:

Aberdeen, Amory, Biloxi, Columbus, Corinth, D’Iberville, Diamondhead, Fulton, Hattiesburg, Hernando, Laurel, Long Beach, Meridian, Moss Point, Ocean Springs, Olive Branch, Oxford, Pascagoula, Pass Christian,  Petal, Poplarville, Ridgeland, Southaven, Starkville, Tupelo, Vicksburg, West Point.

Disclosure: These regulations are based on recent news stories. Check with local authorities for most updated ordinance. 

The default appears to be illegal, while it is largely legal in unincorporated portions of the counties. 

One of the most common refrains from limiting fireworks is safety concerns and injuries caused by fireworks. But a 2017 report from the U.S. Consumer Safety Commission says “there is not a statistically significant trend in estimated emergency department-treated, fireworks-related injuries from 2002 to 2017.”

Rest assured, you are more likely to get injured from the new toy your son or daughter got for Christmas then from fireworks-related injuries. 

Noise is the other big complaint concerning fireworks, particularly after a certain time. Of course, municipal noise ordinances can and already do police that issue.  

So as you celebrate a new year, make sure you don’t run afoul with government regulators that have taken it upon themselves to limit your freedoms.

The cost of going by rail to New Orleans from Mobile will likely be prohibitive for most tourists, according to analysis by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Even the best-case scenario for a train trip and rides to two tourist areas — Jackson Square and Uptown — would cost 65.8 percent more than driving by car, which includes parking near Jackson Square. 

Our hypothetical trip, either by rail or by car, would involve our family of four visiting the area around Jackson Square — where the Aquarium of the Americas, the beignets and coffee of the Café Du Monde, the St. Louis Cathedral and the Louisiana State Museum Cabildo are within easy walking distance — and the Audubon Zoo in Uptown.

Just round-trip train tickets would cost a family of four at least $144 (if the one-way ticket was $18 per person) or as much as $288 (if the ticket was on the high end of estimates at $30 per person one way). 

Adding in rides from Uber (during non-peak hours) to get to some attractions from the train station in the New Orleans Central Business District and the cost balloons to $189.87 (low end of train ticket estimates) to as much as $333.87 at the top end.

The best-selling car in Alabama and Mississippi is the Nissan Altima, which has a 16-gallon gas tank and gets 39 miles per gallon on the highway. With regular gasoline costing $2.14 per gallon in Mobile, a tank of gas would cost $34.24. 

Parking at Harrah’s New Orleans casino parking garage is $5 per hour. Assuming a three-hour excursion to Jackson Square would cost $15.

Parking at the Audubon Zoo is free. The total by car adds up to $49.24. Using the standard federal mileage reimbursement rate still is cheaper than rail at $83.52.

Regardless of whether tourists decide to go by rail or if by car, taxpayers will be heavily subsidizing the $65.9 million project.

Mississippi has already committed about $15 million in state taxpayer money to the project, with Louisiana adding $10 million. Alabama is balking on whether to provide its share of the matching funds.

The Federal Rail Administration — under the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program (CRISI) — is providing up to $32,995,516 in taxpayer funds for improving crossings, bridges, sidings and other infrastructure along the route and adding a railroad station in Mobile. 

A 2015 Amtrak study predicted that 38,400 passengers would utilize restored rail service, which was ended in 2005 before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, across the Gulf Coast. 

It would also operate, according to the study, at a loss of $4 million that would have to be covered by subsidies from state and local governments.

The idea that the state can keep your property through forfeiture when you have not been convicted of a crime does not sit well with many people. And it doesn’t even do what its supporters like to promote. 

The basis of civil asset forfeiture is formed around the idea that your property can be connected to a crime and forfeited to the state, whether you have been convicted of that crime or not. Supporters will often talk about the need to use civil asset forfeiture to deter large drug operations that may cross Interstates 10 or 20. But is that really happening in large numbers?

According to our analysis at Mississippi Center for Public Policy of the civil asset forfeiture database, only 12 percent of seizures have occurred along an interstate route over the past two years and the average seizure is valued at a little over $7,900. 

While that is a relatively low number to begin with, there are several outliers that skew the numbers up. Ten of the seizures are of $100,000 or more and the sum of those adds up to a little over $2 million or 47 percent of all seizures. Those 10 seizures have an average value of $204,220, but only represent 2.1 percent of all seizures.

Removing the seizures of $100,000 or more lowers the average to $4,837. The average of the seizures with a total value of less than $50,000 is $4,274 and represents 97 percent of all seizures.

The vast majority of seizures are valued at less than $10,000, representing 84 percent of all seizures. Even smaller were 161 seizures for less than $1,000 or 34 percent of the total.

Cars and weapons remain the most popular items to be seized, but we also had video game consoles, televisions, and a collectible $5 bill. 

The state has begun to slowly move in the right direction when it comes to civil asset forfeiture. A few years ago, the state mandated that all forfeitures be posted on a central database. This is the only reason we have a view into Mississippi’s civil asset forfeiture world. 

And then in 2018, the legislature let administrative forfeiture die when the law authorizing the program was not renewed. Previously, administrative forfeiture allowed agents of the state to take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely obtaining a warrant and providing the individual with a notice. 

A massive offensive was launched earlier this year to reinstate administrative forfeiture. Fortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful in the legislature. 

Still, the bar remains low for forfeiting property. The state is still allowed to seize and keep property through civil forfeiture, a process that requires the state to go before a judge for an adjudication of whether the property should be forfeited, even if the owner does not file suit. 

In reality, the cost to recover property, meaning attorney fees and court fees, is often higher than the value of the property forfeited, leaving little incentive to attempt to get your property back. 

Seeing the unfairness in such a system, many states have begun to go further in protecting fundamental property and due-process rights. To date, 18 states require a criminal conviction to forfeit most or all types of property. And three states – Nebraska, New Mexico, and North Carolina – have abolished civil forfeiture entirely. 

That is the direction in which Mississippi should continue to move. Criminals should not be allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains, but it should require a criminal conviction before the state can keep that property. 

Because, save for a few outliers, rather than busting drug kingpins, law enforcement is more likely seizing iPhones, guns, or small amounts of cash. 

The truth is that we don’t have to choose between supporting law enforcement or safeguarding civil liberties. We can protect our communities and our Constitutional rights. 

This column appeared in the Meridian Star on December 12, 2019.

Mississippi has a small inflow of cigarettes that are smuggled from other states. A decade earlier, prior to raising taxes on cigarettes, the state has a small outflow. 

That is according to a new analysis on cigarette smuggling from the Tax Foundation. 

Cigarette taxes are one of the easier targets for lawmakers looking for additional revenue as you combine a large network of health advocates pushing for the tax and a shrinking, unsympathetic demographic of smokers.

That is why cigarette taxes have routinely been floated in the legislature since the last increase in 2009. Even though we know the unintended consequences, particularly with a massive hike such as the 221 percent increase that was unsuccessful last year. 

Mississippi has a mild inflow of smuggled cigarettes at 3.32 percent, according to a new analysis from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Tax Foundation. That means for every 100 cigarettes that are consumed in Mississippi, three are smuggled from other states. That is 29th highest in the country.

Mississippi is surrounded by states to the north and east that have lower (though slightly lower in some cases) taxes, including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. Each of those states actually have a positive rate of outbound smuggling, ranging from 2.5 percent in Alabama to 17.1 percent in Missouri.

In a review of cigarette smuggling in 2006, prior to the most recent tax hike, Mississippi had a small outbound rate of 1.7 percent. 

The estimate is built around a statistical model which measures the difference between smoking rates published by the federal government for each state and legal paid sales. There are often yawning gaps between the two — the amount of cigarettes that should be smoked based on sales and the amount of smoking that actually occurs — and that difference is probably explained by smuggling.

The model can be used to make “what-if” estimates based on proposed changes in tax rates, as compiled by the Mackinac Center last year. At an excise tax of $2.18 per pack, as proposed in 2019, smuggling would leap from the current rate to 35 percent of the total market. That is, of all the cigarettes consumed in Mississippi after such a tax hike, 35 of every 100 cigarettes would be smuggled. 

The model also reports that 21 percent of all consumption would be a function of “casual” smuggling. Casual smuggling is represented by individuals who typically buy lower-taxed smokes elsewhere for personal consumption.

The evidence from around the country and elsewhere tells us that relatively high cigarette excise tax rates can produce every sort of mischief, including undermining the very health goals such taxes were adopted to address.

The Mississippi legislature released its proposed fiscal year 2021 budget Wednesday, which will cut $93.7 million from last year’s total in state funds.

Last year, lawmakers appropriated $6.36 billion on the state budget, a figure that balloons to $21.52 billion when federal funds are considered. 

This year’s proposed 2021 budget would reduce that to $6.27 billion (state funds) and $21.19 billion with federal funds included. 

These funds include the general fund, Education Enhancement, Health Care Expendable, and Tobacco Control funds. Just the general fund alone is $4.9 million less than last year’s appropriations.

Legislators will also have $100.3 million more to appropriate, as the state’s tax revenue collections as evidenced by the November revenue report, are $135.5 million above the revenue estimate for this year’s budget.

Among the recommended appropriations in the proposed budget include:

• $18.5 million to fund the teacher pay raise shortfall (deficit appropriation) due to the Mississippi Department of Education’s underestimate of the number of raise-eligible teachers due to problems with their computer system. 
• $4.4 million for a new 60-graduate state trooper school. These new troopers will hit the road in fiscal year 2021.
• A $977,415 increase for the Department of Public Safety to fund officer pay increases.

The JLBC also recommends that the state defund most vacant positions and delete 3,406 of those unfilled jobs while reducing funding for travel and contractual services. The state’s so-called “rainy day” fund, known as the Working Cash Stabilization Reserve Funds, is up to $678 million. 

By law, lawmakers have to set aside two percent of state tax revenue each year to keep the fund filled and protect vital government services from revenue shortfalls during economic downturns.

The 2021 proposed budget would provide a slight increase for K-12 education ($9.54 million or 0.37 percent) from last year’s outlay and reduce the appropriation for the state’s universities by $18.1 million (2.56 percent). 

Community colleges would also take a $9.1 million cut from the 2020 budget (3.61 percent cut).

The recommendation by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee isn’t binding and the real number won’t be known until the session’s end in May, when the appropriation bills for each agency are passed into law by the legislature. The fiscal 2021 budget won’t go into effect until July 1.

In Mississippi, the way the budget process works is state agencies submit budget requests by August 1. 

The JLBC meets every September to hear agency heads make their pitches for their budget requests and to also receive estimates of the state’s tax revenues.

The JLBC meets in November to put together a budget and later releases the budget blueprint in December

The governor also submits a proposed budget as well.

The Jefferson County School District is suing Juul, arguing that the e-cigarette maker is deceptively marketing to teenagers. 

The district in Southwest Mississippi, which is home to about 1,100 students, is the first in the state to file suit. Attorneys are hoping to have it certified as a class-action suit on behalf of all school districts in the state. 

“Defendants’ marketing strategy, advertising, and product design targets minors, especially teenagers, and has dramatically increased the use of e-cigarettes amongst minors, like the student body in Jefferson County School District,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants’ conduct has caused many students to become addicted to Defendants’ e-cigarette products. Plaintiff, and similarly situated school districts in Mississippi, redirected resources to combat the deceptive marketing scheme of Defendants and to educate the school children of the true dangers of e-cigarettes.”

The lawsuit also names Altria, Philip Morris, and Nu Mark as defendants. 

The lawsuit says that the “vaping epidemic” has plagued the school district, leading to new costs, and a redirection of time for faculty, staff, and security. According to the lawsuit, security has to supervise students in the bathroom to ensure they are not vaping. 

The school district is seeking an unspecified amount of money to pay for counselors and various education programs, damages, and attorney fees. 

While this may be the first lawsuit from a school district in Mississippi, this is a rising trend across the country. School districts in Kansas, Missouri, New York, and Washington are among those filing suit, making a similar claim concerning new costs. 

Much like combustible cigarettes, minors are prohibited from purchasing e-cigarettes. 

The U.S. Department of Justice is coming out in support of a former Jones County Junior College student who is suing the school for infringing on his free speech rights.

The DOJ issued a statement of interest in the case of J. Michael Brown, a former JCJC student at the school who is now at the University of Southern Mississippi. 

It says that college campuses shouldn’t be mini police states and that the college shouldn’t wait for a court to steamroll it into compliance, but comply voluntarily with the First Amendment.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed a complaint in U.S. District Court on September 3. The complaint says that Brown was stopped twice by campus police for trying to inform students about the political club he was involved, Young Americans for Liberty, without prior authorization from the school’s administration. 

The DOJ statement compared the school’s regulations regarding public speech from their handbook to the tyrannical state of Oceania in the George Orwell’s “1984.” The statement also says the college has an obligation to comply with the First Amendment. 

These regulations requires at least three days’ notice to administrators before “gathering for any purpose.” The student handbook also puts even more restrictions on college-connected student organizations, which must schedule their events through the vice president of student affairs. The school administration also reserves the right, according to the handbook, to not schedule a speaker or an activity.

The statement says that these restrictions operate as a prior restraint on student speech and contain no exception for individuals or small group and grant school officials unbridled discretion to determine what students may speak and about what they may speak. 

The DOJ urges JCJC to revisit and revise its speech policies. In May, FIRE wrote a letter to Jones Count Junior College President Jesse Smith offering to help the community college bring its policies into compliance with the First Amendment. The school didn’t respond to the letter.

Brown was stopped by campus officials twice, once in February about an inflatable beach ball, known as a “free speech ball,” upon which students could write messages of their choice and the second in April for polling students about marijuana legalization. 

An administrator told YAL that they weren’t permitted on campus since they hadn’t sought permission from the college.

According to Brown, he and another student held up a sign polling students on marijuana. Campus police took him and another student to their office after telling a friend who wasn’t a student to leave and escorted off campus.  

The lawsuit seeks declaratory judgement to strike the free speech restraints from the student handbook, a permanent injunction against the school to restrain their enforcement of unconstitutional policies and practices, monetary damages and attorneys’ fees.

Alabama’s resistance to providing taxpayer money for passenger rail service between Mobile and New Orleans could put the project on hold.

At a meeting of the Southern Rail Commission on December 6, commissioners discussed how to get Alabama leaders to agree to provide taxpayer money to get twice-daily passenger trains that could cost at least $65.9 million in capital outlays.

The service between Mobile and New Orleans would cost each state $3.045 million annually to operate and Mississippi and Louisiana have already committed to providing their shares. Alabama leaders, including Gov. Kay Ivey, are balking about providing taxpayer funds. 

“When you start a new rail line, you have to grow ridership. The cost of operating the train the first two or three years is why we need a source of funding,” said John Spain, an SRC commissioner from Louisiana.

Alabama’s resistance could prove to be the project’s undoing, as Federal Rail Administration grants for restoration and enhancement for rail infrastructure could be reduced or even scrapped for 2020. 

John Robert Smith, former Meridian mayor and Transportation for America chairman, told the commission that there’s no guarantee of an appropriation for 2020 Restoration and Enhancement grants. 

Mississippi has already committed about $15 million in state taxpayer money to the project, with Louisiana adding $10 million. The commitments, according to Smith, would be due a year after the first trains began operation.

The Federal Rail Administration — under the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program (CRISI) — is providing up to $32,995,516 in taxpayer funds for improving crossings, bridges, sidings and other infrastructure along the route and adding a railroad station in Mobile. 

These funds would also pay for preliminary engineering and federal environmental reviews needed for another project of the SRC, passenger service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

The federal grants that would be provided to enact Amtrak service are meant to get the service online. The first year, the grants would provide 80 percent of the operating costs, declining to 60 percent in the second year and 40 percent in the third.

The SRC says the rail service is the final piece of the puzzle for the Gulf Coast’s post-Katrina future.

“We’re sitting in millions of dollars of investment made after (Hurricane) Katrina that is really starting to pay off,” said Knox Ross, commissioner for Mississippi and former Pelahatchie mayor. “You see cities that have leveraged federal investments from Katrina recovery funds that give them downtowns where people want to walk around in, want to live in. 

“One piece of the puzzle that is missing is a way to get people here, get them around. That’s what the train is about and it can get people to the downtowns of the cities while connecting the bookends of our coast, Mobile and New Orleans.”

A 2015 Amtrak study says that a twice-daily train between Mobile and New Orleans would draw 38,400 riders annually. Similar routes have existed from 1984 to 1985 and 1996 to 1997, but both ended because state taxpayer funds were no longer appropriated for that purpose. 

A similar passenger train, the Hoosier Line, received $3 million annually from Indiana taxpayers to provide four days per week service between Indianapolis and Chicago. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb cut the money from his proposed two-year budget that was approved in April after ridership fell 18 percent from 33,930 rides in fiscal 2014 to 28,876 in fiscal 2018.

Already, other federal money is being earmarked for needed improvements on the existing tracks, which are owned by freight carrier CSX. Service between Mobile and New Orleans was ended in 2005 before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast.

Another CRISI grant of $8 million for rail infrastructure is going to the Port of Pascagoula, where it will help provide transportation for wood pellets from a soon-to-be built mill near Lucedale.

A 13-year-old earmark from late Sen. Thad Cochran of $846,000 would help Pascagoula build a platform for the potential service.

Commissioners also said there will be another Amtrak inspection train running along the Gulf Coast route within 24 months. The last one ran in 2016.

Commissioners also discussed a study done by Jacksonville State University concerning passenger rail service between Birmingham and Mobile. Operating such a train would cost between $12 million and $32 million to operate annually and would result in $23.6 million per year in additional tourism spending.

The study used similar methodology to a study by the University of Southern Mississippi that said that restoring passenger rail service could generate $282.58 million for the Magnolia State’s economy.

The SRC is an Interstate Rail Compact created in 1982 by Congress and consists of commissioners appointed by governors from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. 

More than 40,000 Mississippians have moved off food stamp rolls over the past year, representing a decline of almost nine percent in the state. 

According to the most recent data, 446,420 Mississippians were on food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in August. In August 2018, that number was 489,938. Mississippi’s 8.8 percent decline was sixth highest nationally, behind only Georgia (14.4%), Indiana (14.1%), Kentucky (11.7%), New Hampshire (11.6%), and Delaware (9.6%). 

Over the past several years, Gov. Phil Bryant and the legislature have moved to restore work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults who receive food stamps. This has the bonus effect of moving individuals into work and off dependency, while reducing the taxpayer burden of such programs. 

A recently released report by the Foundation for Government Accountability says that work requirements have saved taxpayers $93 million since Bryant restored them in 2015 for able-bodied, childless adults who participated in SNAP.

Food stamp enrollment, according to the report, began to drop immediately in Mississippi and had fallen by 72 percent by October 2018. The drop isn’t unprecedented, as two states, Arkansas (70 percent reduction) and Florida (94 percent) posted similar numbers after instituting similar work requirements for SNAP.

Also, since 2016, the average amount of time spent in the SNAP program for able-bodied recipients in Mississippi has dropped by 60 percent.

The study shows that work requirements have decreased dependency on taxpayers by able-bodied, childless adults. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 85 percent of these adults on food stamps weren’t working at all in Mississippi in 2015.

Those former SNAP recipients received jobs in 716 different industries and only 23 percent of them are still working in entry-level jobs such as fast food or retail. Their incomes grew by 64 percent within three months of leaving welfare. 

After a year, those incomes increased by 98 percent within a year and 121 percent for those who’d left the food stamp program 18 months before.

“Conservative policies are working, and Mississippi is continuing to reap the benefits of welfare reform,” Bryant said on Twitter. “After implementation of food stamp work requirements we have seen significant improvements.”

Bryant’s administration launched a study to track results of the work requirements, as the Mississippi Department of Human Services worked with the state Department of Employment Security, the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center at Mississippi State University, and FGA to track wages and the industries entered by former welfare recipients.

Up until the mid-1990s, there had been little effort at the national level to end dependence on welfare.

In 1996, then-President Bill Clinton signed into law the Federal Welfare Reform Act. It transitioned a permanent entitlement program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children to a temporary block grant program known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families or TANF. 

The new law also established work requirements for SNAP, which were later watered down as the federal government granted waivers for states to eliminate these rules for some segments of the population.

In 2015, Bryant restored the work requirements by ending the work requirement waiver. Those able-bodied childless adults who met the work requirements could stay on the program, but those who failed the meet the standard were terminated from the program starting in the first quarter of 2016.

More reforms for the state’s welfare system were still to come.

In 2017, Bryant signed into law House Bill 1090, also known as the Act to Restore Hope Opportunity and Prosperity for Everyone. Authored by state Rep. Chris Brown (R-Nettleton), the law required eligibility monitoring for Medicaid, TANF, and SNAP and required the state agencies to share eligibility data. It also enshrined the end of the state’s work requirement for SNAP into state law. 

It also mandates that state agencies administering welfare programs verify residency and immigration status and bans the use of the EBT cards at ATMs at liquor stores, strip clubs, casinos, and other questionable businesses.

Thirty states still have partial time limit waivers for the food stamp program, while Mississippi is one of 17 states that have no waivers.