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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. 

Two drive-by shootings in the final twenty-four hours of 2019 in Jackson. A one and thirteen year old shot in the first drive-by in broad daylight at 10 a.m., no less. Multiple other shootings that occurred throughout New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Too many to even count or map rationally on a timeline. 

Eighty-three murders in 2019. Eighty-four in 2018. 

Something has to give. Law abiding citizens are beyond tired. They are exhausted. Utterly, completely, and totally exhausted. And it feels as if their exhaustion, their desperation, is completely unheard and unappreciated by the powers that be. 

When the city addresses this ongoing crisis – if it even bothers to address it, and that is a big question for many – I suspect its comments will primarily focus on lack of economic opportunity. Lack of economic opportunity is one of many factors in the crime equation but, importantly, one over which a local government has very little control, and certainly very little control in the short-term (its importance can also be debated because there are numerous areas around the world with similar poverty rates and access to guns that do not have similar crime rates). It may also deflect towards the nature of domestic disturbances and disturbances among acquaintances and how, in those instances, it is impossible for law enforcement to foresee the dispute and prevent the crime (even though all of these murders and all of our other crimes are not of the domestic or acquaintance disturbance variety). 

But I also predict the city will continue to entirely neglect to confront the factors over which the city and county have complete control: the declining numbers of law enforcement to patrol and - perhaps most importantly - the timely prosecution of cases. Patrol staffing levels appear to be at historic lows. Patrols matter. Police presence matters. The problem of timely prosecution is well-known and affects not only law enforcement efforts to control crime, but also, and very importantly, the civil rights of the accused who often sit in jail for unacceptably long periods of time before being brought to trial. 

It seems that every lay person in the street knows of these issues and how we are entirely lacking in these areas, yet it is the elephant in the room that is not touched by the powers that be. Why is that? 

We can wax philosophically all we want about larger economic issues and their impact on crime – and those can be very real. We can deflect to how law enforcement cannot time-transport itself into the middle of every domestic disturbance to prevent its occurrence, and that is true. But until we control what we can control (such as the numbers of police patrolling and timely prosecuting of cases), economic philosophical musings and deflections to the inability to prevent domestic and acquaintance disturbances ring hollow.

A tripartite approach of swiftness, certainty, and an appropriate degree of severity is a well-known framework for approaching criminal justice issues. Swiftness of prosecution and, if found guilty, punishment; certainty that if found guilty, punishment will follow; and an appropriate degree of severity to fit the crime. We could use more of this here. Currently we have none of it. It is not a panacea, but it is a start. 

I am an adamant supporter of criminal justice reform. America’s criminal justice system collectively was indiscriminately and excessively punitive through at least the 1980s and 1990s, and we are now paying high societal and economic costs for decades of irresponsibility and callousness in how we approached criminal justice. 

But there is a balance to everything. Our city and county have approached criminal justice from a place so far off the spectrum that it defies categorization. Suburbanites often term it “left” or “liberal,” but that is not accurate. It is not operating from a philosophical perspective; it’s just not functioning. We need to redirect the ship. We can start with the basics: enforcement, and the prosecution of cases. 

We are about to have a new district attorney, and that brings great promise for positive change. His predecessor has left him an enormous job of clean-up. Law abiding citizens are literally begging for help.  

This column appeared in the Clarion Ledger on January 7, 2020.

The recent rise in violence from Parchman and other prisons has become a leading issue of the day in Mississippi, and even received national attention. Right in time for the start of the 2020 legislative session. 

Naturally, one of the first questions you will hear is who, or what, is responsible? Is it the governor; is it the Department of Corrections; is it the low pay of prison guards; or the prisoners themselves? Or, is it something else?

Mississippi has begun to address this question. 

In 2014, Mississippi policymakers began to study the issue of criminal justice and explore policy options that would help decrease both crime and incarceration while providing better outcomes for people who encounter the criminal justice system. The passage of House Bill 585 began this process by establishing certainty in sentencing and prioritizing prison bed space for people facing serious offenses. 

This helped reduce the state’s prison population by 10 percent and generated nearly $40 million in taxpayer savings. Policymakers have also passed several pieces of legislation since then aimed at removing barriers to re-entry for those leaving the prison system. 

But this isn’t the end of the story. When adjusted for population, Mississippi still incarcerates nearly 50 percent more people than the average of other states and over 10 times as many people as other founding NATO countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Italy. 

From a budgetary perspective, maintaining the state’s prison system accounts for a large portion of Mississippi’s budget — one of the largest discretionary spending items. In 2019, the state sent over $340 million to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. This does not even account for the additional state, local, and county tax dollars spent on police and jails. 

Maintaining one of the world’s largest prison systems for a population our size consumes a large portion of the state’s budget. This should lead conservatives to ask, “Are we getting what we pay for?” 

It doesn't appear to look that way.

According to the most recent numbers published by the Mississippi Department of Corrections in 2015, over a third of the people released from state prison end up re-incarcerated within three years. This does not even account for people who might be re-arrested. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that another third of those released will end up being arrested again within three years. 

It also appears that our notoriously high incarceration rate has not provided a commensurate decrease in crime. While crime rates in Mississippi are considerably lower than their peak two decades ago, Mississippians are still more likely to be the victim of property crimes than those in other areas of the country. 

And the economic impact of the state’s reliance on incarceration is not limited to tax expenditures. Mississippi has the fourth lowest workforce participation rates in the country. This means fewer people are working or looking for work than in most other states. Research shows that one of the main drivers of this lower economic participation is previous involvement with the criminal justice system. 

While the state has been lauded for the reforms to this point, the prison population remains stubbornly high, as Mississippi continues to incarcerate more people per capita than all but two other states. The latest numbers show that the state is falling further behind economically, as our workforce participation is growing at a slower pace than most other states. While other states are moving to reform their criminal justice systems to reduce reliance on prison, Mississippi cannot rest on its laurels.

The state can work to significantly reduce the incarcerated population by prioritizing alternatives like drug treatment for crimes driven by addiction, treating drug possession offenses at the local level as a misdemeanor, eliminating the state’s mandatory minimum habitual sentencing structure that imposes long prison sentences on petty offenses, and ending the practice of automatically sending people back to prison for minor violations while on probation or parole.

The state can also fund alternatives to incarceration like intervention courts, community diversions, and community drug treatment that produce system-wide cost savings. We can also paint the full picture by providing the overall cost of each prison sentence to judges before they impose sentences, like in the federal system.

Parchman houses some of the most dangerous criminals in the state (and potentially the world) who have committed heinous crimes and they should not be on the streets. Most can agree with that. However, we have a much larger prison population than the examples we initially think of. And simply having a larger prison population that most hasn’t made us safer. Rather, as the latest news shows, we need to continue to reform our criminal justice system, and reprioritize and refocus its purpose. Simply giving a raise of a few thousand dollars to prison guards won’t do that. 

Medicaid expansion, campus free speech, regulatory reform, teacher pay raises, and infrastructure spending are some of the issues that the Mississippi legislature will likely tackle in the session that starts today.

Since this session follows an election year, legislators will be in town until May 10, about a month longer than usual. 

Last year’s session ended on March 29, nine days before legislators were supposed to leave town.

With a longer session, the deadlines will be pushed back. February 24 is the deadline for bills to be introduced and March 10 is the first deadline for bills to be passed out of committee in the originating chamber.

Medicaid expansion

One of the biggest issues facing the legislature is the possible expansion of Medicaid for able-bodied, working adults up to 138 percent of the poverty level under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Thirty-six states have expanded Medicaid, which has the federal government cover 90 percent of the costs. The other 10 percent.

Any attempt to expand Medicaid will likely face the veto pen of incoming Gov. Tate Reeves, who made stopping expansion one of the primary issues of his campaign.

Incoming Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is open to the idea, but House Speaker Philip Gunn is less supportive.

If Louisiana is any indication, participation and thus costs will far exceed estimates. According to a report by the Louisiana-based Pelican Institute, the state expected 306,000 new enrollees when it expanded Medicaid eligibility, but that number has ballooned to 456,361 according to recent data from the Louisiana Department of Health. That’s an increase of 49.1 percent.

A study by Institutes for Higher Education in 2015 said that it’d cost taxpayers $159.1 million per year by 2025 if 95 percent of the eligible population participated in the expansion (310,039 enrollees). 

Campus free speech

As evidenced by events over the past year, work remains on ensuring that the state’s universities and community colleges don’t restrict the free speech rights of students and faculty.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in September on behalf of a former Jones County Junior College student who was stopped several times by campus police and administrators from exercising his free speech rights. Attorneys for the college are seeking dismissal of the case in a filing on December 5.

One of the ways that the legislature could protect the free speech rights of students is enacting legislation that would prevent the creation of restrictive speech codes, keep administrators from disinviting speakers (especially controversial ones), create a series of disciplinary sanctions for students and anyone else who infringes the free speech rights of others, and allow people whose First Amendment rights were curtailed on campus to be compensated for court costs and attorney fees.

Regulatory reform

A study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that the state’s administrative code has 9.3 million words and 117,558 restrictions. To read all of it would take 13 weeks of 40-hour work weeks and some breaks.

This regulatory morass places a heavy burden on businesses to stay in compliance and could be reduced with some common-sense reforms.

One of those would be a law that’d require the state’s regulatory bodies to strike two regulations for every new one that the board or commission seeks to enact. 

At the federal level, President Donald Trump’s administration has enacted similar policies starting in 2017 that eliminated $13.5 billion in regulatory costs in fiscal 2019. In fiscal 2020, this could generate savings of $51.6 billion according to government estimates.

Gasoline tax hike

There is also a push for a gasoline tax hike for Mississippi drivers. Right now, they pay 37.19 cents in state and federal taxes on every gallon of gasoline, about 11 cents a gallon less than the national average. The state’s gas tax was last increased in 1987. 

The Mississippi Department of Transportation requested $1.1 billion for fiscal 2021. Of that budget request, $559 million is from federal funds, $305 million from the state’s gasoline tax, $161 million from other state taxes and $75 million from state truck and bus taxes and fees. 

The Office of State Aid Roads has requested $195,463,799 in from special and federal funds, which helps maintain 25,857.04 miles of county roads that are considered “feeder” routes between the state highways. This money also goes to maintaining 5,368 bridges on these routes

Also possible is a local option gasoline tax that is similar to Florida’s that would allow counties and municipalities to hold referendums on increasing local excise taxes on gasoline by a few cents. This would require a constitutional amendment and is probably unlikely.

Seemingly forgotten is the Mississippi Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2018 that was passed in a special session. The law diverts 35 percent of the state’s use tax revenues by next year to cities and counties to help with infrastructure. It also authorized $300 million in borrowing, with $250 million for the Mississippi Department of Transportation and $50 million for local infrastructure not administered by MDOT.

The infrastructure bill also increased registration fees for owners of hybrid and electric vehicles and is redirecting gaming tax revenue from sports wagering to roads and bridges.

The legislature also created a lottery, the first $80 million in tax revenue annually going to the state highway fund until 2028 and the rest put into the Education Enhancement Fund. 

In the first week of sales, the lottery earned of $8,932,200, with $1.9 million going to roads and bridges statewide.

Teacher pay raise

One of the first things that legislators will have to tackle is a deficit appropriation of $18.5 million to cover the $1,500 pay increase for the state’s teachers passed in last year’s session.

Due to problems with an antiquated computer system, the Mississippi Department of Education reported a smaller number of eligible teaching positions than actually existed. 

The $1,500 pay hike likely won’t be the only raise teachers receive from the legislature. During the campaign, both Reeves and Hosemann supported increasing teacher pay to the “southeastern average.” 

With $100 million in additional revenue available to appropriators, Mississippi teachers could see more in their wallets. Teachers have enjoyed three pay hikes since 2000, beyond their annual step increases.

Mississippi teachers are the lowest paid nationally (average of $44,926 before the increase took effect in July), but when the state’s low cost of living is factored in, their pay ranks 35th, according to analysis of data by North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation.

Using the new raise as a guide, every $1,500 in raises will add up to about $76.9 million annually. An 11.29 percent increase that would bring the average Mississippi teacher’s salary to about $50,000 would cost about $263 million annually.

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