This was the seventh week of the 2022 Legislative Session. Last week was dominated by committee action debates on “money bills.” These are measures generated by the Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees and deal with income and spending. Even bills such as the teacher pay proposals, although they have passed both chambers will have to travel through the appropriation committees in each house.
Money bills are passed with a “reverse repealer” in them, which means that they must next go to conference before passage. The process is kind of like gathering up all your household bills and figuring out how much money you have or will have available to pay them. If you receive a large inheritance, like we did this year from Congress, then you can finally do some things you’ve been putting off. That’s kind of how the conference process works.
That’s why predictions of whether or not something is affordable is premature, in my opinion. We have no firm numbers on how much money we will have to appropriate until conference time. We’ve fought hard for those things we think are important, but, in the end, the conference committee members, three from each chamber appointed by the leadership, will make the decisions.
It is a good sign when both Houses pass bills about the same topic, like teacher pay raises. That usually means that something along those lines will pass. We just don’t know what the final version will look like yet. I voted “yes” on both versions and sponsored the House bill.
The House Ways and Means committee also took up several bills on the House floor this week.
House Bill 1662 would authorize issuance of bonds to construct a new Mississippi Armed Forces Museum. Currently, the museum, which underwent a renovation in 2015-2016, is at Camp Shelby. The location for the new museum would be owned by the Mississippi Military Department and would be located near Camp Shelby. The bill passed by a vote of 114-7 and has been sent to the Senate for consideration.
Other Ways and Means bills included a bill that would exempt the sales of coins, currency and bullion from sales tax (House Bill 426); a bill that would exempt property owned by a university foundation from ad valorem tax (Senate Bill 2769); and a bill authorizing issuance of bonds for various purposes across the state (House Bill 1663).
Last week one of the hot-topics of money conversation was what we are going to do to help rescue our state parks. We have two state parks right here in the neighborhood, Roosevelt and Coal Bluff. While I think ours are the most beautiful and family friendly, they need updating and maintenance care that costs money. My position is that we should appropriate one-time money from the one-time money we have right now and come up with a yearly funding source for them to make these repairs and updates. We can improve the look and user friendliness of our parks, but that takes more than a regular appropriation provides.
For the record, I am absolutely opposed to privatizing these wonderful, family-oriented, natural recreational places. The people paid for them and they should belong to the people. I will fight any efforts to do otherwise. Our state parks are one of our biggest treasures we have in the State and were designed for all of our families to use and to take in the outdoors.
On Wednesday of this week, the Jackson State University football team, Sonic Boom of the South marching band, alumni and fans celebrated JSU Capitol Day. The football team was presented in the House chamber with House Concurrent Resolution 30, which commends and congratulates the Jackson State team on winning the 2021 SWAC Championship. Coach Prime addressed both the House and Senate. We were proud to welcome them!
We are now at about the half way point in the session and this week we will start taking up Senate bills in our committees.
Thanks for give me the opportunity to serve you. Feel free to reach out to me anytime at tmiles@house.ms.gov
