JACKSON — The Mississippi House has agreed to a plan to fill deficits in the final days of the budget year.
The House voted 72-37 Wednesday to pass Senate Bill 2001 in a special session, but only after hours of debate. Senators passed the bill, 33-14, Tuesday.
The bill gives Gov. Phil Bryant permission to take as much as needed from the $349 million rainy day fund to balance the $6 billion-plus budget.
State tax collections have fallen significantly short of expectations since the budget year started last July.
Bryant has made two rounds of spending cuts and has already pulled $45 million from the rainy day fund.
The budget year ends tonight at midnight.
Local legislators are split along party lines on the special session. District 15 Sen. Gary Jackson and District 17 Sen. Chuck Younger, both Republicans, voted in favor of allowing Bryant to draw more money from the state’s rainy day fund. Sen. Angela Turner, a Democrat representing District 16, opposed the measure.
In the House, Republican representatives Gary Chism of District 37 and Jeff Smith of District 39 supported the bill. Democrats Tyrone Ellis of District 38 and Kabir Karriem of District 41 opposed it.
Chism said the session was simply to address a shortfall that was the result of state revenues coming in a bit below expectations.
“Every year, we estimate the revenue to a certain figure,” This is a little less than one percent less,” Chism said. “The reason that we had to go down and clear it was that it was going to be higher than what the statute allows the governor to take from the rainy day fund. It could be that the governor will have to take an additional $40-50 million from our rainy day fund.”
Ellis, however, voiced sharp discontent with the special session. He questioned the decision to withdraw more funds from reserves to cover a budget shortfall after tax cuts legislators recently approved.
“We were in the (regular) session near the end of the session when they brought the franchise tax bill forward,” he said. “We argued until we were blue in the face about why are we doing this–when we have projections coming in at an all-time low, why are we giving away our revenue stream?”
Ellis said Bryant’s already pulled money from the rainy day fund to “plug holes” in the state budget. He wondered why, when state services are facing spending cuts, the legislature continued to approve tax cuts.
“Why do you keep giving all this money away and mental health is declining and the Department of Health is failing and falling?” Ellis said. “We don’t have enough money to pay the sanitation workers to go out and inspect the restaurants. We’re laying people off. We’re closing the crisis centers and don’t have anywhere to take care of people who are mentally ill or unstable. Why are we doing this when we know full well that it is our responsibility to take care of our citizens?”
Younger said it was important for the legislature to approve the measure to give Bryant extra spending power to ensure the budget is balanced out.
He pointed a finger at House Democrats for not approving the budget on Tuesday and dragging the special session on to a second day, saying they “wanted an extra day of pay.”
“Democrats usually love to spend money,” Younger said. “Well, we were wanting not to just spend it but to be able to pay our bills, the Republican majority did. That’s why we passed this, so we could pay our bills. The Democrats … didn’t really want to pay our bills, to spend the money, but they did want an extra day of pay.”
Younger said a few factors have contributed to the state’s budget shortfall. He said cattle prices are about 60 percent off of where they used to be. Low corn and pine prices also hurt, he said.
Ag’s a big big business for Mississippi,” he said. “That’s hurt our revenue a good bit because if the farmers don’t make money, they don’t spend money. That’s part of the problem, and I’ll tell you something else too, my wife buys online all the time. No tax revenue from that. She buys too much…The state gets no revenue from that. I think Amazon might tax a little bit but most of it there are no taxes or revenue collected from the state for buying on the computer. That’s something (the legislature) might have to look at.”
Karriem expressed concern about giving Bryant authority to withdraw an unlimited amount from the rainy day fund.
“The problem that I’m having representing folks of District 41 is giving the governor access to the rainy day fund, and his ability to go in and get out of it as much as the state needs to balance the budget,” he said. “I think that can be problematic. I think we’re also setting a precedent, not capping off what he can get out of the rainy day fund.”
Karriem also said that some legislators weren’t notified properly of the special session. He said some received less than 24 hours’ notice, and only learned about the special session through media reports and an announcement Bryant made on the SuperTalk Mississippi radio station.
And like Ellis, Karriem said he was worried about what will happen for struggling services that are facing budget cuts as Fiscal Year 2017 approaches.
“Right now, whatever the shortfall is, the governor has the ability to reach into the rainy day fund and get out,” he said. “But you’re going to have a titanic of a problem in 2017 when some of the estimates and some of the agencies being underfunded as far as mental health, Medicaid and Medicare, veterans affairs, education, just to name a few that are underfunded, and we’re going to be right back to trying to fund those agencies as we move forward.”
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