9486 in the collection
Mississippi governor vetoes $79M budget restoration bill
Buddy Fish Comment: Let's Build Prisons, not schools. Is he serious!
Today Governor Haley Barbour vetoed a bill that won final legislative approval last week to take $79 million from the state's financial reserves and use it to restore more than one-fifth of the budget cuts Barbour has made, because of declining revenues, since the fiscal year started last July 1.
Barbour said the bill "would diminish the state's savings accounts and that it would put too much into elementary and secondary education and not enough into community colleges, prisons and other programs," although Mississippi has about $500 million in reserves.
The Associated Press
Mississippi lawmakers are working on another plan
to plug some holes in the state budget after Gov.
Haley Barbour followed through with his promise to
strike down their original proposal.
Barbour vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have
restored more than one-fifth of the $458.5 million
in cuts he has made since the fiscal year started last
July 1. State revenues have been anemic because of
the struggling economy.
The Republican governor said too much of the
proposed $79 million budget restoration would
have gone to schools and not enough to other state
services, including prisons.
He said the plan also relied on “one-time” money
that would be available during the current budget
year but not in the future.
“The bill avoided the inevitable: Restructuring state
functions to continue a high level of service to
Mississippians,” Barbour said in a statement. “We
need a new approach to operating state government,
not higher taxes to feed its bureaucratic appetite.”
The Senate on Thursday will get a chance to
override the veto, but there may not be enough
votes for a required two-thirds majority. The bill
passed the Senate 26-22 last week; an override
would take 34 votes.
Barbour is in his seventh year as governor, and
lawmakers have not reversed any of his vetoes.
House Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi, said three
members of the House and three senators are
working on a separate proposal to put some money
back into the budget.
“These negotiators are willing to continue their
pursuit for softening the drastic cuts to vital
services for Mississippians, including education
and mental health,” McCoy said Wednesday.
One of the negotiators, Sen. Doug Davis, R-Hernando, said the state was recently notified that it
is receiving an unexpected $36 million from the
federal government for Medicaid, the government
health insurance program for the needy. Davis said t
he money does not have to be used directly for
Medicaid, and top lawmakers are looking at using
$14 million for budget restoration in the current
year. The remaining $22 million would go into next
year’s budget, he said.
Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, said the $14
million could be put into the prison system.
Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps has told
sheriffs that because of budget cuts, he might have
to pull some state inmates out of county jails next
month. The state pays counties $20 per inmate per
day. The inmates pick up litter and perform
maintenance work on county buildings.
The current state budget started at nearly $6 billion.
Unless some of the cuts are restored, most
programs will lose nearly 8.7 percent of their money b
efore the year ends June 30. Even as lawmakers
continue trying to plug holes current budget, they’
re working on separate plans to pay for state
government in the coming year.
— Associated Press
Clarion Leger
2010-02-24
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010100224019
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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