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The tax cut battle between Mississippi Republican House and Senate leaders continued Monday with each chamber overhauling its proposal.

But the two sides still appear far apart as the legislative session enters its final weeks. The House wants to eliminate the state personal income tax. The Senate just wants cuts and rebates. Senate leaders have said the House plan is foolhardy during uncertain economic times. House leaders say the Senate cuts are a half measure.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, on Monday unveiled a proposal to suspend the state’s 18.4-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax for six months, to help Mississippians facing skyrocketing fuel prices and other inflation. The Senate is also increasing its proposed income tax cuts, but spreading them out over eight years.

“I started questioning what inflation was doing back in November, and it was 2.5%,” Hosemann said at a press conference Monday. “On March 8, I was informed it was at 6.7% … It cost me $106 to fill up my truck … Because of huge increases in inflation hitting everyone so hard, today I am requesting we do an immediate suspension of the state gasoline tax for six months.”

Hosemann and Senate leaders are proposing the state, with coffers overflowing largely from an influx of federal stimulus spending, use $215 million in surplus to reimburse the Mississippi Department of Transportation for suspending the gas tax for six months. This would reduce prices at the pump by 18.4 cents a gallon.

The Senate also changed its income tax cut plan. It had proposed phasing out the state’s 4% income tax bracket over four years. Now, in a plan that passed in committee Monday, Senate leaders propose cutting the state’s top, 5% income tax bracket to 4.6% over four years, then phasing out the 4% bracket over the four years after that.

In the House, leaders overhauled their plan to eliminate the state’s personal income tax, phasing in elimination more slowly and removing an accompanying increase in sales taxes. House leaders said they’ve addressed every concern Hosemann and Senate leaders have raised.

The Senate plan would still include a one-time tax rebate of up to 5% for taxpayers — from $100 to $1,000 — and would cut taxes on groceries from 7% to 5% in year one.

The House on Monday stripped a sales tax increase from 7% to 8.5% from its proposal, and slowed its roll a bit on the phase out of the personal income tax. It also removed its proposal to cut car tag fees in half, with the state subsidizing local governments who levy most of the fees on tags. It would still lower grocery taxes, but more slowly, by .25% a year down to 4%.

“Every objection the Senate has made to our plan has now been addressed,” House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia. “The only objection you could have now to the plan is that you just don’t want to remove the tax on work in Mississippi.”

The House had previously proposed exempting $40,000 in income for individuals and $80,000 for couples from income taxes in year one, then phasing the tax out from there. The new proposal is to exempt $25,000 and $50,000 in income, respectively, to start.

The House plan had included a “growth trigger” of 1.5%, meaning any revenue growth beyond that each year would further reduce the income tax until it was gone. It has increased that trigger to 1.6%, and put a cap of $150 million a year that would go toward eliminating the income tax, meaning anything over that would go back into state coffers.

House leaders had predicted the income tax could be phased out in about 10 years or so. Lamar said Monday that with the changes, that would now take about 15 years, depending on growth.

The House passed this latest version of Speaker Philip Gunn’s income tax elimination proposal Monday afternoon with a vote of 83-33. Many Democrats who supported the earlier version said they could not vote for the latest proposal because it did not cut the local tax on car tags.

“I supported it basically because of the car tag cut,” said Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville. “Now you have nothing I can support.”

Lamar said the Senate leadership had been adamant in opposing a reduction in the cost of car tags.

“My own father is mad at me about that,” Lamar said from the well of the House. “But the Senate refused to do it.”

Other Democrats expressed concerns about cutting revenue while the state still has many vital needs.

Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, pointed out needs that local governments have needs in the area of education, in health care and in other areas.

“Until Mississippi addresses all these serious needs it has, I think this bill is premature,” Scott said.

In Senate committee debate on its new proposal, Democratic Sen. Hob Bryan of Amory also made this argument, with an emotional plea to his colleagues.

“This will do untold harm to our state,” Bryan said of the Senate plan. “$439 million every year, in perpetuity, out of the general fund forever. Forever! Forever! We don’t have clean drinking water in Mississippi. We have sewer systems that are inoperable … If you think reducing the income tax will bring a single person to this state you are wrong. But not having functioning water and sewer systems will keep them out … What about our roads? Do you drive on them? Don’t you see all the cracks?”

Neither Hosemann nor Gunn had comments on the other’s latest proposals on Monday.

READ MORE: 5 things to know about the Great Mississippi Tax Cut Battle of 2022

This is the second major overhaul of Gunn’s income tax plan since he unveiled it last year and it died in the Senate. In the first version last year it would have increased the state sales tax on most retails items from 7% to 9.5%. It would have increased other sales taxes by 2.5 cents on the dollar. For instance, originally automobiles now subject to a 5% tax would have seen that increase to 7.5%.

But facing opposition from many business lobbies and Gov. Tate Reeves, Gunn reduced the general sales tax increase and did away with the increases in other sectors such as automobiles and farm equipment. He also added a measure to cut car tag fees in half, with the state subsidizing local governments who levy most of the fees on car tags. The income tax exemptions in the original plan were also lowered in this year’s first proposal.

READ MORE: Gov. Reeves pours cold water on income tax cut plan as it passes House

The latest changes to the tax proposals come after a recent article from the conservative Tax Foundation — whose policies Gunn has said were an impetus for his plan — was critical of both his and the Senate’s income tax proposals.

The Tax Foundation article questioned whether the original House plan, with its 1.5% “growth triggers” on income tax elimination, would allow the state budget to keep up with inflation.

“General fund growth limits are not fundamentally bad, but HB 531 includes a mechanism that would restrict growth to no more than 1.5 percent per year,” the Tax Foundation article said. “To put that rate in perspective, at the end of January the 12-month change in inflation was 7.5 percent, the highest rate since 1982. Considerable uncertainty exists over how long it will take for inflation to return to the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent, but it is not unreasonable to assume that rates could remain somewhere above the target rate for several years. If that occurs, a 1.5 percent cap on revenue growth will significantly diminish the purchasing power of Mississippi’s general fund.”

The Tax Foundation article said the Senate plan was simpler and less risky, but notes flaws in both and says, “Mississippi is close to making meaningful reforms, but there is still more work to be done if the Magnolia State is to sustain the intended transformation.”

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The federal board that will determine whether the Gulf Coast gets its Amtrak route back is closer to reaching a decision. 

The Surface Transportation Board issued an order Friday, spelling out questions it wants Amtrak and the freight rail companies to address in its upcoming evidentiary hearing on April 4. Following the latest set of hearing dates, the board is expected to finally make a decision about the route’s future.

Freight company CSX Transportation has been at odds with Amtrak over the proposed train route that would run between New Orleans and Mobile with stops in Mississippi for years. Amtrak trains that once traveled along the Gulf Coast never returned following Hurricane Katrina. A year ago, Amtrak filed a petition with the transportation board to operate the route along the freight-owned railways after failing to reach any agreements with CSX and another freight company that owns tracks along the route. 

In its latest filing, the transportation board asked the freight rail companies and Amtrak to have conversations with the U.S. Coast Guard over the use of drawbridges on the route. The bridges, and whether they can be drawn down and support added traffic from a passenger train, have been one of many of many points of contention and confusion during the debate over the route’s future.

Alabama leadership largely sided with CSX, saying they wanted more studies done on whether added passenger trains would affect the freight trains ability to move product during public hearings last month. Mississippi leaders, such as U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, said Amtrak’s return to the Gulf Coast has been delayed long enough. 

The evidence hearings were first scheduled for March. CSX asked they be postponed. They’re now set to be held virtually on April 4 and 5 with the option of extending to April 7 and 8 as needed. 

Ultimately, the board will decide if the addition of Amtrak routes would unreasonably affect the freight companies that run 11 trains on that set of railroad per day. Amtrak’s legal right to operate its proposed two-train route on freight-owned tracks comes from a 1970s agreement that reprieved freight companies from providing public transportation. 

The transportations board’s decision on the Gulf Coast will likely set a precedent for other passenger train access cases across the country. 

The post Gulf Coast Amtrak route one step closer to learning its fate appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This Q&A first published in Mississippi Today’s InformHer newsletter. Subscribe to our free women and girls newsletter to read stories like this monthly.

Dr. Christina Glick is a neonatologist who has had a career-long interest in human milk diet for premature infants and breastfeeding for all babies. She also runs a free-standing breastfeeding clinic in Jackson, Mississippi Lactation Services, to continue and expand her advocacy efforts for the many benefits of breastfeeding.

Mississippi Today spoke with Glick this week about the benefits of breastfeeding, the stigma around it that exists in Mississippi and how the larger culture around breastfeeding in America needs to change.

Editor’s note: This Q+A has been edited for length and clarity.

Mississippi Today: Why is breast milk important for the health of babies, and especially preterm babies?

Dr. Christina Glick: Breast milk in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) has been shown to be absolutely life saving. Fewer babies die when they’re given a breast milk diet. That should convince all of us that it’s absolutely important, right? There’s a couple of things that breast milk does that are life saving. One, it reduces the number of infections that babies have. One of the things that premature babies die from in the NICU is bloodstream infections and they are actually reduced by using a breast milk diet. There’s also necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a catastrophic intestinal infection that has a very high mortality rate. (NEC typically happens within the first 2 weeks of life in babies who are fed formula instead of breast milk. In this condition, bacteria invade the wall of the intestine.) We can really reduce the rate of NEC infections when babies are fed breast milk instead of formula. It goes almost to zero when there’s an exclusive breast milk diet, which is just phenomenal. 

Some of the more subtle things breast milk does is that it changes the bacterial microbiome of babies, and when we establish a normal, healthy microbiome from the newborn period, we think it actually changes lifelong health. That’s one of the things that we’ve lost when we use formula and we cannot replicate that using probiotics. There’s no way to do it other than using fresh breast milk. 

There’s a lot of stuff that breast milk does that is really sort of magical, and that we are only now beginning to understand. And we think that the longer and more intensive research that goes into it, we’re going to learn more about these kinds of benefits. 

MT: As you know, in Mississippi, one of every seven babies is born preterm. We also have the highest rates of preterm birth, infant mortality, child mortality, low birthweight and neonatal mortality. Despite all these issues, we also have one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the nation. Why do you think the stigma around breastfeeding still exists here, even though it offers so many benefits?

CG: I’ve had my breastfeeding clinic for about seven years now, and what I’ve noticed that has a really profound effect on women breastfeeding is the culture that they live in. So that includes how their mothers and their grandmothers fed. One of the most common things I hear is someone coming in and saying, ‘my mother says I need to use formula because I’m not making enough milk. That’s how I was fed and I’m fine.’ And so it’s those kinds of voices that really discourage women from breastfeeding. And so we need to get the breastfeeding rates up in our whole community so that the mothers and grandmothers and neighbors and sisters have all breastfed, and then they know about the breastfeeding journey so they know how to counsel the new mother who is struggling with low milk supply and a hungry baby. So that first answer isn’t give that baby a bottle of formula, it’s let’s breastfeed or a little more often, so we can increase your supply. There’s a lot of confusing information that exists just culturally about what normal feeding is. And when we live in a formula culture, that’s not good information for babies who are breastfeeding.

MT: In recent years, the discussion around working mothers’ needs around breastfeeding has become more prominent. But any gains in workplace accommodations for breastfeeding mothers has been concentrated in wealthier, whiter workplaces. I was hoping you could talk a bit about that disparity.

CG: People that work hourly wage jobs tend not to be given adequate breaks for breastfeeding. Nor are they given an adequate place to breastfeed. The hourly wage workers are often told to go pump in the bathroom. That’s like saying ‘go eat lunch in the bathroom.’ That’s gross! So, there needs to be universal, safe, clean and private places to pump for mothers who are working. And that just doesn’t happen except in the white collar environment. You know, if you’re a banker, or a lawyer or whatever, you’re going to have a private office, and you can certainly have a lot more flexibility with your hours and how long you’re going to break to go pump. But if you’re working where there’s no place to pump, it’s going to be very, very hard to get adequate pump sessions and to continue to be able to provide milk for your baby.

MT: What do you think about how breastfeeding is handled in America and what needs to change there?

CG: You’ll find that in countries where breastfeeding is standard, even the taxicab drivers will turn around and say to the mamas when there’s a crying baby, ‘well feed your baby.’ We hide breastfeeding here. We don’t breastfeed very well in public. And until we begin to have that as a perfectly normal part of our standard behavior, it’s going to interfere with our breastfeeding rates. I want to have mamas and grandmas that have the expertise in breastfeeding, so new moms don’t need me as much. I mean, there’s gonna be a need for me and my clinic no matter what, but I want there to be that community support where they don’t have to come to me for every little problem in their breastfeeding because they’re getting that support at home.

The post Q&A with neonatologist Dr. Christina Glick on the benefits of breastfeeding appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn is still privately telling donors and political advisers he’s considering a 2023 run for governor against Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves.

That’s why Jackson politicos have been closely watching Gunn during this 2022 legislative session. They’ve wondered whether the third-term speaker would use the final legislative session before the election year to show strong leadership — the kind of leadership that inspires and brings political factions together, that brings about lasting and positive change for the state. 

After all, Gunn and others say that Reeves has long lacked such qualities dating back to his two terms as lieutenant governor. If Gunn wanted to make a name for himself and launch a viable statewide campaign against an incumbent, he needed to set himself apart from Reeves during the pivotal first three months of this year.

But so far this session, Gunn has done nothing of the sort. He looks more like a spitting image of Reeves in his Capitol days: a stubborn bully, quick to kill bills that he and his allies didn’t write because he can’t get his way.

And in the shock of the 2022 legislative session thus far, Gunn has begun aligning himself with Reeves to intimidate Republican senators into supporting a bill they don’t like.

Gunn’s dug-in heels ahead of Wednesday’s major deadline signals that he will not let any spending bills — including the historic $1.8 billion in American Rescue Act Plan funds — pass unless Senate Republicans commit to supporting his proposal to completely eliminate the state’s personal income tax.

“I am of the belief that if we can’t get this tax elimination done in the next two weeks, the governor should call a special session to eliminate the income tax before we spend a dime of other money … (American Rescue Plan Act) money, capital expense fund money, anything,” Gunn said on Feb. 28. “The governor has been very supportive of elimination and this issue. He shares our view that we don’t spend money until such time as we give the taxpayers some tax relief… We hope the governor would call a special session on income tax elimination.”

READ MORE: 5 things to know about the Great Mississippi Tax Cut Battle of 2022

Reeves, whose political aides have nervously stalked Gunn’s every move for months, is relishing the speaker’s public invitation to help get income tax elimination across the finish line.

“I’m impressed by the improvements (the House has) made, and I’m impressed they have a true plan to eliminate the state income tax,” Reeves said in a press conference last week. “I’m very reluctant to call special sessions … but elimination of the income tax is an issue that certainly could rise to that level. I am not taking that option off the table.”

Gunn’s best idea to set himself apart during the 2022 legislative session was to pass a complete elimination of the income tax — a once-in-a-lifetime achievement that would certainly play well among Republican voters on the statewide campaign trail in 2023.

But after struggling to earn buy-in from Republican senators, Gunn has become so desperate that he’s willing to ask Reeves for help and hand his arch-rival the political gift of a lifetime: the chance to take full credit for Gunn’s best idea.

READ MORE: House offers ‘compromise’ teacher pay raise, but Senate says it wasn’t in on the compromising

It’s enticing to consider the 2023 ramifications of this moment, but the speaker’s holding hostage the ARPA funds will dominate news cycles for at least the next three weeks. Lawmakers have until 2024 to spend the $1.8 billion pot, but that deadline means little to the many Mississippians who need the money now.

Cities and counties have been holding off spending their own small pots of ARPA money on long overdue road, water and sewerage repairs because there have been indications from lawmakers that a state match could be coming their way. The Senate passed a $750 million state match program for local governments to spend on these projects.

Hospital leaders and nurses are desperate for relief as they come off a fourth COVID-19 wave. The Senate passed a $12 million plan to address that.

Several state agencies have major needs and lost revenue during the pandemic. The Senate passed a $211.4 million plan that would provide infrastructure upgrades to state agencies, including $26.5 million for work on various state buildings. The Senate also passed a $110 million plan for water and sewerage projects at universities and community colleges, and a $250 million plan to reimbursement for lost state revenue from the pandemic.

The state’s teacher shortage crisis will drastically worsen after this school year in large part because of growing mental health crises among faculty and students. The Senate passed a $105 million plan to address several mental health issues across the state. 

Many Mississippians can’t work because they can’t find or afford child care, and others face evictions and foreclosures because of the economic effects of the pandemic. Many states have used ARPA funds to help child care centers expand and help protect people who may lose their homes.

All of these Senate spending proposals are among the many in jeopardy between now and the end of the session as Gunn struggles to garner support for his tax cut plan that some — including Republican senators — say could drastically harm the state’s economy in the long run.

Meanwhile, as Gunn continues to create drama at the Capitol, at least one person in downtown Jackson is already reaping political benefits of the moment — and it might just get him reelected as governor.

READ MORE: Senate reluctantly takes House bill to ensure passage of teacher pay raise

The post Speaker Philip Gunn is holding $1.8 billion hostage — and could give Gov. Tate Reeves a big win appeared first on Mississippi Today.

State Sen. Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune, joins Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau and Geoff Pender to discuss her bill, a proposal seeking to create “Buddy’s Law,” to provide mental health resources to minors who abuse animals. She also discussed tension between GOP leaders during the 2022 legislative session.

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side here.

The post Podcast: Sen. Angela Hill discusses ‘Buddy’s Law,’ tension at Capitol appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large sits down with Ki Harris, the Executive Director for the Freedom Project Network. Ki knew he wanted to give back the moment his diploma hit his hand. That meant he would teach and the Atlanta-native ended up teaching in the Mississippi Delta thanks to Teach For America. Coach Ki, as he was known to his football players and English students quickly learned his students were hungry to learn.

That love of giving back is what led him to his next job: Director of College Access and Experimental Learning at the Sunflower County Freedom Project. Today, Ki is the Executive of the Freedom Project Network which helps support and tie the Sunflower County, Meridian and Rosedale Freedom projects together. Ki shares his life and passion for uplifting lives and proves he is not talking out of a book; he is talking out of his heart.

The post Mississippi Stories: Ki Harris appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Just because Mississippi is among the rare group of states that have elections every year does not mean that the state always has compelling election seasons.

Unless unforeseen events occur, this year’s election cycle falls under the not-so-compelling category. All four general elections for the state’s U.S. House seats are expected to be snoozers. In all four elections, both major political parties are running candidates, and the candidates from the party out of power in each district deserve respect and our attention as they try to accomplish near herculean tasks. But those elections would be major upsets should those candidates prevail.

The respected Cook Political Report compiles what they call “partisan voting index” for each congressional district in the country. The index shows how strongly a district or state leans toward a party based on a formula developed by the Cook political scientists using historical data.

The partisan voting index for all four Mississippi House districts are in the double digits. Both the 2nd Congressional District, where Democrat Bennie Thompson is the incumbent, and the 3rd, where Republican Michael Guest is the incumbent, have partisan voting indices of 13 in favor of the incumbent. The 1st District, where Republican Trent Kelly is the incumbent, has a pro-Republican tilt of plus-18, while the 4tb District seat occupied by Republican Steven Palazzo is at plus-22.

In other words there is no naturally “competitive” seat in Mississippi, where under normal circumstances the candidate of each party would have a reasonable chance of winning.

There are districts with higher partisan voting indices than those found in Mississippi. But another study by the FiveThirtyEight blog, which also uses historical data, suggests that Mississippi has the most inelastic electorate in the country. In other words, the people who vote Republican in Mississippi generally always vote Republican, and the people who vote Democratic in Mississippi seldom, if ever, cross over.

The partisan voting index of the entire state, according to Cook, is Republican plus-10, which incidentally is lower than at least four states with governors from the other party. The partisan voting index of both Maryland and Massachusetts is more pro-Democrat than Mississippi is Republican, yet they have Republican governors. The reverse is true for Louisiana and Kentucky that have what appear to be popular Democratic governors.

On the other hand, Mississippi has not elected a Democratic governor since 1999 — former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. But remember that elasticity index. People in Mississippi are more set on how they vote than people in other states.

The NAACP and others are seeking through the federal courts this year to have Mississippi congressional districts redrawn in a way that would make at least one congressional district — likely the 3rd — more competitive. The state Legislature redrew the districts this year to adhere to population shifts found by the 2020 U.S. Census. That redistricting is being challenged by the NAACP on the grounds it diminishes the impact of Black voters by placing the bulk of them in the 2nd District and spreading the remainder out in a manner to minimize their impact in the other three districts. If a greater percentage of African American voters, who are the Democrats’ primary voting bloc in the state, were placed in the 3rd, then that district could perhaps become more competitive.

Most people believe the lawsuit is a long shot in the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Mississippi.

The early 2000s, when Democrats still controlled both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature, was the last time an effort was made to develop more competitive congressional districts. That year, based on U.S. Census data, the state lost a congressional district. The goal of Democrats in the state Legislature was to draw a new map where they would be the solid-blue 2nd District but make the 3rd District more competitive.

They attempted to do this by drawing the 1st District to encompass much of north Mississippi, including the Tupelo and DeSoto County areas, and stretching it all the way down into suburban Jackson. The late House Speaker Tim Ford, a Democrat from Baldwyn who supported the plan, dubbed it the “tornado district” — not a moniker that engendered support. But the intent of the plan was to place more African American voters in the 3rd District in an attempt to make it competitive.

But Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, the presiding officer of the Senate who was then a Democrat but later switched to the Republican Party, blocked the “tornado” plan. Since then, with a couple of exceptions, Mississippi has not had competitive general elections for the congressional seats.

Perhaps 2022 will be an exception for one or more candidates in Mississippi, but history and math are not on their side.

The post Why Mississippi is not known for very competitive elections appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gas prices in the United States have significantly increased recently, with places such as California and Illinois experiencing some of the highest prices of $5 per gallon and upward, according to the American Automobile Association.

CBS reported on a combination of factors that have led to this situation:

• Over two years into the pandemic, economic recovery and increased vaccination rates mean a post-pandemic demand for gas as people are driving more for work, trips, etc.

• In the early days of the pandemic, oil production was cut due to low demand, and now production as a whole has been slow to catch up.

• The United States does not import much gas from Russia — less than 10%. But, U.S. sanctions do add to the issues with the overall global market.

Mississippi ranks lower with an average price of $4 per gallon. However, lower prices can still be financially impactful given states' varying economies.

As CNN puts it, Mississippians need to work two hours and 34 minutes to fill up a 15-gallon tank at an average price of $4.01, but Californians only have to work two hours and 18 minutes with a significantly higher average price per gallon of $5.72.

The post Data Dive: Gas prices in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.