Barbour pushes budget plan as session nearing

Published 5:00 am Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Gov. Haley Barbour stopped in Brookhaven on Monday morning tomeet with local media and area legislators in preparation for theupcoming special session.

Barbour’s stop at State Bank and Trust was one of several thegovernor has made around the state recently. He planned to have metwith about 80 lawmakers by Monday evening.

During his brief visit, Barbour outlined his revised budget forfiscal year 2006, which begins July 1, saying his plan would entailno tax or fee increases while increasing funding for education.

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Education costs, the governor said, are 61 percent of the statebudget.

“The budget I propose is the first structurally balanced budgetwe’ve had in five years,” the governor said of his plan.

The governor’s budget proposes a $109.5 million increase forK-12, including $9.5 million for the increase in premiums for K-12employees’ health insurance, a 5.4 percent increase over fiscalyear 2005.

“All of the Department of Education’s state mandates for teacherpay raises, state health insurance and retirement are fully fundedby this budget,” said Barbour. “It also provides twice as muchmoney for classroom supplies and instructional materials as we didlast year.”

The governor said his proposed budget would benefit the state’sschool systems and fulfill promises made to teachers.

“I think the main thing is a quality teacher in everyclassroom,” he said, explaining that keeping promises ensures morequality teachers will stay in the state and bring other teachers tothe Mississippi.

The governor’s proposal also would set aside an additional $3.1million for Mississippi school districts that have experiencedunusually high growth in the number of students they serve.

In other areas of education funding, Barbour’s budget calls forproviding $1.7 million in funding for Mississippi School of theArts in Brookhaven, an increase of $385,000 over this year’sfunding.

The governor said he could foresee no scenario under which MSAwould be forced to close this year. However, he did say the idea asliding tuition scale for students at MSA and the MississippiSchool for Mathematics and Science in Columbus is an option thatcould be explored.

“The day is going to come soon where we should consider whetherstudents who are financially able would pay some sort of tuition,”Barbour said.

Barbour said he believes his budget proposal will get”Mississippi’s fiscal health on the road to recovery.”

He said he was pleased that, based on additional March and Apriltax revenue, the Department of Finance and Administration hasestimated that $73 million more is available for next year’sbudget.

In addition, he said changes to the state’s Medicaid program andlast week’s $100 million dollar settlement with MCI, the formerClinton-based WorldCom, will allow the state to pay some debts.

For instance, “we will be able to pay back $50 million to MDOT(the Mississippi Department of Transportation) that was highwayconstruction money raided in 2003,” Barbour said.

The governor said adamantly that he does not want to seeadditional one-time money used for recurring expenses, whichlawmakers have done in years past.

The Legislature’s special session begins at 1 p.m. Wednesday,and Barbour said work could be concluded quickly.

“There’s no reason why we can’t finish by the weekend,” he said.”It just depends on people’s attitudes.”

As of now, the governor, who by law sets the agenda of specialsessions, has not included the state budget in the session call,which has puzzled some lawmakers. It does, however, ask lawmakersto erase deficits in the fiscal 2005 budget.

The governor indicated Monday that the fiscal 2006 budget couldbe addressed after these deficit appropriations and severalbond-related bills were addressed.

Legislative special sessions cost taxpayers about $35,000 aday.

DAILY LEADER Managing Editor J. Ben Kelly contributed tothis report.