Lawmakers face lengthy special session agenda
Published 5:00 am Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The Legislature reconvened in Jackson today for a specialsession, and lawmakers found themselves facing a much larger agendathan anticipated.
Gov. Haley Barbour released the final version of the session’scall Tuesday, outlining eight issues left over from the regularsession that require further action, including an immigration bill,an copper theft bill and another round of talks on voter ID.
Medicaid, however – the issue for which the special session wasoriginally expected – is not among items scheduled fordiscussion.
Instead, local legislators said, the first and most importantissue that will receive attention is the Mississippi Department ofEmployment Security, whose reauthorization failed amid a disputeover state agency advertising practices.
“It passed in the Senate, but in the House, they didn’t evenbring the bill out of committee,” said District 92 Rep. BeckyCurrie, R-Brookhaven. “We have to vote on allocating money foremployment security – there’s too much at stake.”
With MDES out of the way, the session – which governmentofficials estimate to last three days at a cost of around $140,000- will move on to some of the regular session’s hottest issues.
The governor wants lawmakers to reexamine the immigration law,but local lawmakers are not very enthused.
“When he signed it into law, the governor said he had problemswith E-verify,” said Currie, referring to the computer program thatchecks the legality of Social Security numbers. “But that’s theonly system we have.”
District 91 Rep. Bob Evans, D-Monticello, believes theimmigration law, if in need of adjustment, should be left as isuntil the 2009 regular session. He said more important issues thanthe immigration law – which passed both legislative chambers bylarge margins – need attention.
“If it was a bad bill, he should have vetoed it,” he said. “Hecertainly hasn’t had any trouble vetoing deer baiting, lead paintor copper theft legislation.”
District 53 Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, saw no need forchanging the law, either.
“It appears the governor would like to weaken the immigrationbill,” he said. “This is the legislation that everyone has beenclamoring for – I don’t think it needs any tweaking. Leave italone.”
While local legislators are united in their opposition tochanging the immigration law, each looks on the upcoming debateover voter ID legislation from different viewpoints.
Currie is calling for such legislation to be enacted, Evans isnonchalant and Moak has seen it all before. Efforts to contactDistrict 39 Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith were unsuccessful.
“It’s not like we haven’t seen that one for the past 10 years,”Moak said of voter ID, which has been an on-and-off issue in theLegislature for years. “I don’t think we’re going to pass it inspecial session, much less get the (U.S.) Justice Department toapprove it.”
Evans, though not an outspoken proponent of voter ID, realizesthe issue is larger than him.
The lawmaker said a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholdingan Indiana voter ID law has “pretty much taken care of that forus.” He said he has personally never witnessed any “abject voterfraud,” but knows the law is coming.
“If the Supreme Court has OKed it, something has to be done,” hesaid. “I can’t stand in the way of U.S. Supreme Court caselaw.”
The special session’s agenda contains several other issues.Some, such as revisiting the copper theft bill, are important toLincoln County and surrounding counties and others, like theconstruction of toll roads on the Gulf Coast, are not.
Each local legislator looks on the different issues withdifferent levels of enthusiasm.
One of the special session issues Currie supports is 15 percentpay raises for judges and 10 percent raises for district attorneysand assistant district attorneys. She said pay raises for theofficials are appropriate to keep quality personnel in publicservice.
“These judges and DAs could go to work as a lawyer and make awhole lot more money than they can as a judge or a DA,” she said.”It we want quality personnel in these positions, we have to beable to entice them to want the job.”
Moak, who is chairman of the House Gaming Committee, has alreadypromised the governor’s request to take action on a bill that willlimit the expansion of gaming in Mississippi will not survive.
“The governor’s office called me (Tuesday) looking for someoneto introduce the legislation,” he said. “I said I would introduceit, but we’re not going to deal with it. They said, ‘Sure, that’sfine.’ I will introduce the legislation, and it will die.”
Moak said the gaming committee would not meet on the bill duringthe special session, thus ensuring its demise.
“We’re not going to spend our time chasing rabbits,” he said.”We have other issues we need to spend our time on, like if we everget a Medicaid bill.”
Evans reserved his political emotions for the special session’sphantom: Medicaid. Though the Mississippi Hospital Association hasreturned to the negotiating table as predicted and governmentofficials say Medicaid will definitely be added to the agenda oncethe talks are complete, Evans is still smarting over the death ofthe cigarette tax.
“My hospitals say they can live with the hospital association’sproposal, but I asked them if they could live better if there was atobacco tax increase instead,” he said. “Essentially, my hospitalshave told me, ‘Yes, we can live with it if they’re going to cram itdown our throats.’ No one can understand why the cigarette tax wasnot allowed, because that seems like the obvious fix.”
Evans said he is opposed to, and will vote against, any Medicaidsolution that involves any kind of assessment on hospitals.
“It doesn’t matter to me if we do show up for the specialsession and I find that the association is OK with a bed assessment- I’m not going to vote for it,” he said. “If they’re not going toallow us to bring cigarettes in as part of the issue, I’m not goingto vote to raise any kind of assessment against small, ruralhospitals that are struggling to survive now.”