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Mississippi has some of the most consumer friendly laws in the country when it comes to buying and using 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; from June 15 through July 5 and from December 5 through January 2. 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 children’s toys 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 the day which marks our freedom from the tyranny and oppression of another country, make sure you don’t run afoul with our own government regulators that have taken it upon themselves to limit your freedoms.

A few months ago, I wrote with great hope and optimism that 2020 very well could be the “year for alcohol freedom.” 

Unfortunately, even before the coronavirus pandemic forced adjustments to the legislative session, legislators were already casting their votes against many widely popular bills that would have expanded the freedom of Mississippians and strengthened entrepreneurs. Or just never considering such bills. 

Sunday sale of alcohol. Grocery stores allowed to sell wine. Direct shipment of wine. Expansion of liquor licenses. Privatization of distribution. Craft brewery freedom. Regulatory reform. A range of bills were introduced this session that would have dramatically empowered both consumers and entrepreneurs. Almost every single one of these bills died.

In voting against alcohol freedom, legislators are not only consistently voting against the will of Mississippians but are also crushing potential economic growth of a potentially major industry.

In a survey conducted earlier this year, an overwhelming 75 percent of Mississippians said that they would be in favor of legislation that allows grocery stores to sell wine in addition to beer. Furthermore, 48 percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for a legislator who had supported such legislation, while only 17 percent said they would be less likely to vote for said candidate.

The survey also found that among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, levels of support were above 70 percent. How often today are individuals across political parties able to so strongly agree on an issue? The present support should have been enough to drive change.

House Bill 981, sponsored by Rep. Brent Powell (R-Flowood) and Senate Bill 2531 sponsored by Sen. Walter Michel (R-Ridgeland) would have changed state policy and allowed for the widely supported sale of wine in grocery stores. Unfortunately, neither bill even made it out of committee, and thus was never given a chance for a floor vote in the House or Senate.

Ironically, many Mississippians shop at stores such as Costco, Whole Foods, Sam’s Club, and others throughout the state who have their own liquor store directly attached to the actual store. However, current law does not allow these stores to be connected internally, so one is forced to walk out the door and then right back in. These types of rules fail to pass even a basic test for common sense.

Mississippi had the opportunity to become the 44th state in the nation to give individuals the freedom to purchase wine and have it shipped directly to their homes through Senate Bill 2534, also authored by Michel. When this bill came to the floor, it was defeated by a vote of 32-13. 

At the present moment, it seems that the only bill set to pass would allow for shipment of alcohol to a local liquor store. This allows a customer to avoid the hassle of going through the ABC warehouse process to order a specific bottle of wine or liquor, but is far from embracing the widely supported direct shipment of alcohol to one’s home.

In rejecting many good bills, legislators have chosen to not only restrict freedoms that are widely supported by Mississippians, but also to further hinder the alcohol industry in the state. 

Moving forward it seems likely that pandemic has changed the state of the game for many burdensome rules and regulations. Many rules have been dismissed, including ones that blocked the sale of to-go bottles of wine or mixed drinks, as well as the delivery of alcohol curbside. While a pandemic has raged across the nation, many of the rules which we were previously told were enacted for our safety, were quickly thrown out in order to promote actual health and safety via social distancing techniques.

Thus, the question is begged as to what other rules ought to be dismissed to further protect health and safety. Ordering alcohol online via one of the many food delivery apps would surely help to lower the number of physical interactions at stores. The direct shipment of wine to one’s home would also go a long way to improve social distancing methods. As the fear of a Fall Covid-19 return looms, should we not quickly take action to promote and encourage safe actions in any way possible?

Support for change in alcohol policy is not a political issue, but a freedom issue. The question at hand is whether state officials trust their constituents to make decisions related to personal responsibility for themselves. 

While this may not have been the year for alcohol freedom, continued growth in support for new policies demands a coming change to the status quo.

This column appeared in the Daily Journal on June 23, 2020.

Legislation to make it easier for military spouses to obtain an occupational license when they move to Mississippi will be among the item’s legislators will be able to consider when they return to finish out the session.

Today, about one in five need a license to work, a strong contrast from the 1950s when just five percent of the population needed permission from the government to earn a living. The impact on military families is even more pronounced than the public as a whole. Data from over the past year – before governments shut down the economy because of the coronavirus pandemic – showed military spouses had unemployment rates that ranged from 20 to 25 percent. 

Why do we see this? One of the reasons is the obvious. The average military family moves every two to three years, meaning new town, new schools, new lives, and, if the spouse is working, a new job for him or her. 

But obtaining an occupational license from another state, which includes new classes and testing, doesn’t make finding a new job easy, and it certainly doesn’t make it quick. By the time the paperwork and testing are completed, and you receive a license and then find a new job, you will likely be moving before too long. This process then repeats itself with every move. Eventually it gets to the point that it isn’t worth it. And we see absurdly high unemployment rates for military spouses. 

Senate Bill 2117 would make important changes to ease that burden off military families. It is now headed to the governor after the Senate agreed to House changes today.

Under the proposal, occupational boards in Mississippi will be required to recognize occupational licensed obtained from other states for military members and their families, if the applicant holds a current license from another state and is in good standing. The board will have 60 days after the application is filed to issue (or deny) a license. 

If someone has already jumped through the necessary hoops to obtain a license in another state, we should recognize that license in Mississippi.   

New legislation giving the Occupational Licensing Review Commission the ability to review existing regulations is one step closer to becoming law after the House concurred with changes from the Senate.

House Bill 1104, authored by Rep. Randy Boyd, allows OLRC to review, on its own discretion, the substance of an “existing occupational regulation promulgated by an occupational licensing board.” 

Under the law, regulations must increase economic opportunities for all of its citizens by promoting competition and thereby encouraging innovation and job growth and use the least restrictive regulation necessary to protect consumers from present, significant, and substantiated harms that threaten public health and safety.

If a regulation does not, the OLRC can declare that the noncomplying regulation will become invalid 60 days after the date of review, according to the new law. 

The OLRC is made up of the governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. 

Today, Mississippi has more than 117,000 regulations, which numerous empirical studies show to have a detrimental effect on economic growth. Mississippi also licenses 66 low-and-middle income occupations. According to a recent report from the Institute for Justice, Mississippi has lost 13,000 jobs because of occupational licensing and the state has suffered an economic value loss of $37 million.

HB 1104 passed 97-17 in the House and 36-15 in the Senate. After the concurrence, it is now headed to the governor. 

Two days before the June 17 deadline for floor action on legislation from the other chamber, both the House and Senate are moving forward with key bills that will expand liberty, remove barriers, and make it easier to work and earn a living in Mississippi. 

While there are other bills still alive that run counter to the ideals of liberty and freedom, here is a rundown of many of the good bills that have already moved:

HB 838: This will allow individuals leaving state prisons to use MDOC documents as qualifying papers to obtain a driver’s license. For ex-offenders to land gainful employment, they generally need a driver’s license. Something that has been a hinderance. This will make that process easier by allowing MDOC documents in lieu of a birth certificate or social security card. The bill has a reverse repealer, meaning the bill will now go to conference. 

HB 1024: This will make various reforms to Mississippi’s “three strikes” habitual offender law for nonviolent drug offenses. It prevents offenses from more than 15 years ago counting toward the enhancement and prevents nonviolent offenses from triggering a life sentence. The bill has a reverse repealer, meaning the bill will now go to conference.

HB 1104: This will give the Occupational Licensing Review Commission the ability to do a review of an existing regulation to determine whether it increases economic opportunities for citizens by promoting competition and uses the least restrictive regulation to protect consumers. Right now, the OLRC, which is comprised of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state, is limited to review only new regulations. It was amended in the Senate and will return to the House for concurrence. 

HB 1136: The Learn to Earn Act will provide new apprenticeship opportunities for Mississippi students. It was amended in the Senate and will return to the House for concurrence. 

SB 2117: This will provide universal recognition of occupational licenses for military families. In committee, the House took the language of House Bill 1510, a similar bill, and inserted it before it passed the House. It now returns to the Senate for concurrence. 

SB 2123: This will allow the Parole Board to consider individuals after they have served 25 percent of their sentence for a nonviolent offense and 50 percent for a violent offense. The bill has a reverse repealer, meaning the bill will now go to conference.  

SB 2552: This will remove the prohibition on how much alcohol a brewery can sell on its premises. It has been sent to the governor.  

SB 2594: This extends the Special Needs Education Scholarship Account program, which was needed, or it would expire at the end of June. While this is still a good program with great potential, the legislature has chosen to keep the program tiny and even made changes that hurt the program. It is now on to the governor.

SB 2725: This will legalize the cultivation of hemp in Mississippi. It was amended in the House and will return to the Senate for concurrence.

SB 2830: This will expand the current list of eligible patients in the state’s Right to Try law to an individual with a traumatic injury and would also allow adult stem cells as a treatment option. It is now on to the governor.

Bills that would allow the Occupational Licensing Review Commission to review existing regulations are moving in both chambers. 

Mississippi’s Occupational Licensing Review Commission, adopted in 2016, is a positive step toward scaling back the regulatory arm of the state, but is limited to new regulations only. This would give the Commission – which is made up of the governor, attorney general, and secretary of state – the ability to review existing regulations and to act upon it if it does not:

Today, Mississippi has more than 117,000 regulations, which numerous empirical studies show to have a detrimental effect on economic growth. Mississippi also licenses 66 low-and-middle income occupations. According to a recent report from the Institute for Justice, Mississippi has lost 13,000 jobs because of occupational licensing and the state has suffered an economic value loss of $37 million.

Senate Bill 2790, authored by Sen. John Polk, would give the OLRC the ability to review the substance of any regulation cleared the Senate and is on the calendar in the House. A similar bill, House Bill 1104, authored by Rep. Jerry Turner, has now passed the Senate, after clearing the House earlier in the session. That bill originally only gave the OLRC the ability to look at regulations adopted since 2012, but the Senate changed the language to allow the Commission to review any regulations.

It will be returned to the House for concurrence or conference, where the two chambers would hash out differences before agreeing to a final bill.

This is a good step, but more needs to be done to rein in Mississippi's regulatory burden. This includes:

House Bill 1212, sponsored by state Rep. Jason White, would prohibit a real estate broker from hiring salespersons until they have had their license for 36 months.

Right now, a real estate salesperson needs 12 months of experience working under a broker to earn their broker’s license. Under HB 1212, they could still do that, but would not be able to hire any salespersons for three years.

This isn’t the first time that this bill has made an appearance in the Mississippi legislature. In 2018, HB 1246 was passed by the legislature, but vetoed by then-Gov. Phil Bryant.

In his veto message, Bryant said the bill would be an over-burdensome law and a barrier to entry for potential brokers. He also said two more years of experience will not necessarily guarantee that a real estate salesperson will be better prepared to become a broker.

On both counts, Bryant is correct. Passage of this bill would make it harder to become a broker, which eliminates competition for existing licensees. Two more years of experience also won’t guarantee that a broker is more knowledgeable.

There isn’t some need for this. This is simply an attempt by current license holders to use the government to fend off new competition. 

MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it violates our principles and therefore should be opposed. 

Read HB 1212.

Track the status of this and all bills in our legislative tracker.

While a bill that would begin a small regulatory reduction appears dead in the Senate, a new report shows Mississippi is the most regulated state in the South. 

This is according to a new brief authored by James Broughel and Kofi Ampaabeng from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. On a population-adjusted basis, Mississippi has a regulatory rate of 0.039, meaning regulations per person. Louisiana has the second most at 0.035, followed by Kentucky with 0.029. 

Louisiana isn’t that surprising. In terms of the total number of regulations, they have the second most in the South with 163,000. Florida has the most at 171,000, yet adjusted for population, that dips to 0.008. A fraction of Mississippi’s regulatory burden. 

Why is this helpful? It paints a better picture of Mississippi’s regulatory burden (though not actually better). One could argue that in terms of raw number of regulations, we’re middle of the pack nationwide – or not that bad. But as the brief outlines, there are reasons that more populous states might tend to have more regulations than less populous states.

“For example, more populous states might have more industries, so some forms of regulation may not be necessary in less populous states,” the authors note. “It is also possible that more populous states have denser population than less populated states, and when more people are congregated in smaller areas, certain externalities or other market failures could be more prevalent, thereby necessitating more regulation. 

“Finally, some scholars have posited that there are fixed costs associated with regulating and that larger populations will be able to absorb these fixed costs more easily by spreading them across a greater number of people. Therefore, more populous states could be expected to have more regulation because it is relatively cheaper for them to impose regulation than less populous states.”

What does this matter? Regulatory growth has a detrimental effect on economic growth.

Regulatory growth has a detrimental effect on economic growth. We now have a history of empirical data on the relationship between regulations and economic growth. A 2013 study in the Journal of Economic Growth estimates that federal regulations have slowed the U.S. growth rate by 2 percentage points a year, going back to 1949. A recent study by the Mercatus Center estimates that federal regulations have slowed growth by 0.8 percent since 1980. If we had imposed a cap on regulations in 1980, the economy would be $4 trillion larger, or about $13,000 per person. Real numbers, and real money, indeed. 

On the international side, researchers at the World Bank have estimated that countries with a lighter regulatory touch grow 2.3 percentage points faster than countries with the most burdensome regulations. And yet another study, this published by the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found that heavy regulation leads to more corruption, larger unofficial economies, and less competition, with no improvement in public or private goods. 

For those hoping for reform, House Bill 1422, which passed the House, would have created a pilot program for regulatory reduction. The way the bill works is the Mississippi Departments of Health, Transportation, Agriculture and Commerce, and Information Technology Services would have review its existing regulations, accept written comments from the public for 60 days following the review and conduct at least two public hearings for citizens and businesses to identify any rule or regulation that is burdensome.

The review would have to be conducted within 120 days of HB 1422 becoming law. Each of the agencies covered in the pilot program would have to reduce their regulations by:

This bill needs to clear Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency committee in the Senate today or it’s dead. 

As people began staying in during the coronavirus pandemic, food trucks soon became a popular option in neighborhoods across the state.

Whether it was because restaurant dining halls were closed, people were nervous about going out, or the fact that many festivals where food trucks tend to congregate being cancelled, all of a sudden we realized what a great benefit food trucks provide. And food trucks were happy to fill that hole.

Food trucks are a fixture in booming cities across America and can be found in many locales up and down Mississippi. That is as long as local governments stay out of the way. Which they mostly have. Though protectionist tendencies are hard to break. 

Food trucks already follow the same health and safety guidelines set by the Department of Health as brick-and-mortar restaurants, but some don’t like the idea of competition from colorful trucks that tend to draw a crowd. For more than a year, the city of Tupelo debated food truck regulations. In the end, Tupelo did the right thing and never followed through on early regulatory proposals such as what streets you could be located or how far you must be from a brick-and-mortar restaurant. 

Why did Tupelo need the proposed regulations? Were people who visited food trucks becoming ill? Did they hate their food? Hardly. 

Tupelo Councilman Willie Jennings said, in proposing the regulations at the time, “I just want to make sure the established businesses are protected.” Another councilman, Markel Whittington, said brick-and-mortar restaurants have requested food truck regulations. While he didn’t feel food trucks posed a “threat” to those restaurants, he believed it was appropriate for government to act “on behalf of select business interests.” Hint: It’s not.

Councilman Mike Bryan lobbied for brick-and-mortar restaurant protections, such as a ban on major roads. “I feel like it is not fair to brick-and-mortar businesses to allow food trucks to park in front of their business,” Bryan said. Another councilman, Buddy Palmer, also indicated his support for a ban. “I will always be pro-downtown businesses over food trucks,” Palmer said. “I am for brick-and-mortar businesses much more than I am for food trucks.” Or you could just support new business coming to your city and letting consumers decide?

In Columbus, it wasn’t the government but the proprietor of a local CJ’s Pizza that called the owners of the shopping center where his restaurant is located and had a food truck removed from the parking lot. After all, it was too close to his establishment. “If you think you're gonna park a food truck right next to my restaurant in the same parking lot and poach my customers then think again,” the rant read on Facebook.

This isn’t how business works. You can’t just run your competition out of town. You provide better food, better service, or a better price, preferably all three. And then the competition closes shop because they can’t survive. 

Food trucks are examples of entrepreneurs responding to market signals. In so doing, they are contributing to the local economy by serving a customer niche. Brick-and-mortar restaurant entrepreneurs can do the same, and many have. All of these entrepreneurs, new and old, are creating unique options and working to build a more diverse and appealing food marketplace in Tupelo, Columbus, or wherever they are located. In turn, this attracts more consumers to the downtown – creating a bigger, healthier and more prosperous local economy.

In a properly functioning economy in America, the success of a food company should be based on how good the food and service is; not on how well connected it is to the political class. In a system of capitalism, competitors respond to consumer trends with innovations and improved offerings, not by seeking government help to build a moat around their businesses. We should be encouraging entrepreneurs and risk-takers, not creating hurdles out of a misplaced sense of obligation to protect existing businesses.

It is not the role of government to protect any business, brick-and-mortar or otherwise, from competition. The free enterprise system operates correctly when consumer choice, not political blessing, is the basis of choosing the winners and losers. As we’ve seen during the pandemic, needless regulations only get in the way of consumer choice. That might be healthcare regulations restricting your access to telemedicine. Or your ability to choose what you would like to eat. 

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