Lincoln County and area lawmakers offered mixed reviews on Gov.Haley Barbour’s State of the State address Monday.

The annual hour-long address to the Legislature andMississippians as a whole began with a reiteration of the goodthings the state has accomplished recently, mainly in the growingenergy industry. It ended on the same note, but the meat of thematter in between dealt with the possibility of cutting 8.1 percentfrom every state budget – an action Barbour said could result in4,000 prisoners being released – unless lawmakers allowed him moreauthority to adjust budgets on a department-by-departmentlevel.

District 91 Rep. Bob Evans, D-Monticello, expressed oppositionto some of the governor’s ideas.

“I thought (Barbour) made a pretty good reference to Dr. MartinLuther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, because if he think I’mgoing to vote to give him more power to cut the budget, he’s havinghimself a dream,” Evans said.

Evans refuted the governor’s claim that no one in the state orLegislature has the stomach to implement tax increase to help closethe budget gap. He said many House Democrats are ready with taxincrease legislation to offset the need for massive budgetcuts.

“There are plenty of us in the Legislature ready to raise theincome tax on higher brackets, cigarettes, alcohol and gambling,”Evans said. “He does not have to cut (education). He could easilytell us to come up with more revenue, taxes, and we wouldn’t haveto cut any of these important agencies. He hasn’t chosen to dothat.”

Evans also rejected Barbour’s call for prudent spending of thestate’s reserves. The governor agreed to spend one-third – $78million – of the Rainy Day Fund and around $35 million from theHealth Care Trust Fund. Evans wants to spend whatever is availableto prevent cuts to education, mental health and other importantstate agencies.

“If it’s not raining this year, it ain’t never going to rain,”he said.

District 53 Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, disagreed withraising sin taxes, pointing out that such measures have alreadybeen taken and have not resulted in a cure-all for the budget.

“Everybody can jump on the bandwagon about sin taxes, but we’realready there. We have loaded those wagons,” he said.

Moak said cigarette taxes were increased just last year,Mississippi’s alcohol taxes are already in the top 25-30 percent ofthe nation and casinos’ revenues have fallen to a levelcommensurate with 1995.

“Casinos have lost 15 years of gaming revenue in this economy,”he said. “On the coast, you’ve got cranes sitting on the beachbecause projects have not been completed … we’ve got one inbankruptcy. We need to grow the industry because it creates jobs -one casino has provided 4,000 jobs with no government grants orassistance to get them going.”

Moak said he still wants to protect the education budget as muchas possible, which must be done by prioritizing services.Education, health care and public safety should be fully funded andbudget cuts should come elsewhere, he said.

“Cuts will come next year, but they won’t be as bad when you cuta fully funded budget,” he said.

District 92 Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, backed thegovernor’s plans, but she was disappointed he did not address theissue of waste in state government spending. Finding andeliminating frivolous state spending could protect reserve fundsand soften the impact of budget cuts, she said.

“It’s time we know where our money is,” Currie said. “We have noidea where education spends the money, where the department ofmental health spends the money – we just don’t. We’re going to makerash decisions and cut agencies that are doing a good job becauseof agencies that continue to waste taxpayers’ money. It’s time toget a grip on it.”

Currie disagreed with the Democratic response to the address,which promised Mississippi that none of mental health’s crisisintervention centers would close. Barbour suggested closing all ofthe centers in his executive budget recommendations.

Currie is in favor of keeping the facilities open only if theyare used to house mental patients awaiting commitment.

The facilities were designed for that role, she said, but havenever fulfilled it, with mental patients continuing to spend daysin jail before commitment. She has legislation pending that wouldchange the state’s commitment laws to allow the crisis centers tofunction in such a way.

“If we could actually get somebody out of the Lincoln CountyJail and take them to the crisis center, I think it would be agreat thing to keep them,” Currie said. “That’s a good example ofwaste – we funded the centers, we paid to build them and we haven’trun them correctly. Let’s do this right … what a concept.”