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Gov. Tate Reeves and other Republicans have argued that states do not need the $195 billion in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan to offset revenue losses caused by the coronavirus-induced economic slowdown.

Mississippi is slated to receive $1.8 billion from the pot of money — a sizable amount considering the annual general fund state budget is about $6 billion.

Reeves is right in the sense that many states, including Mississippi, have not yet suffered as dramatic revenue losses from the COVID-19 economic slowdown that they experienced during the recession caused by the financial meltdown in 2008-10.

Mississippi’s tax collections have continued to grow during the pandemic. Through February, which is the seventh month of the fiscal year, the state has collected $338.5 million, or 9.5% more than during the same time last year. Sales tax collections, the state’s largest single source of revenue, is up $73.3 million, or 5.5%. Use tax collections — primarily the 7% tax on internet purchases and the fastest growing source of state revenue — is up $63 million, or 30.3%.

Because of these strong revenue collections, Mississippi’s policymakers do not have to use the American Rescue Plan funds just to make up for revenue lost because of the coronavirus economic slowdown as some states will have to do. They have a chance to be innovative in spending the funds for the betterment of the state.

There are restraints on how the funds can be spent that will need to be explored. But policymakers can take their time to study their options because they have multiple years to spend the funds. The funds can be spent, for instance, “to make investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

There are, of course, countless local governments throughout the state, with the city of Jackson at the head of the list, with water and sewer infrastructure needs they cannot afford to fix on their own.

“A lot of options are available,” said Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, who said House attorneys are still evaluating those possible options.

“We have the opportunity to stretch out and take bold action in spending the funds to help Mississippians,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader.

The situation is much different for Mississippi than in 2009 when Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Mississippi received about $1 billion from that federal legislation to help make up for state revenue lost from the so-called Great Recession.

Mississippi needed every dime of those federal funds and more to prevent state budget cuts, including the layoff of state workers. The decline in state tax collections during that time was unprecedented. In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the state for the first time in modern history experienced consecutive years where less revenue was collected than the previous year.

Mississippi used the ARRA fund to partially offset the reduction in tax collections during a period of three fiscal years.

This time around, Reeves says that the Mississippi economy has fared better than the economies of many other states because businesses were not shut down because of COVID-19 to the extent they were in other states.

Many economists also point to the impact of past federal COVID-19 relief packages as being particularly helpful to Mississippi. The $600 per week in unemployment benefits provided in the past federal legislation combined with the $235 available in state unemployment relief resulted in many Mississippians earning more while not working than they were making at the job they lost because of COVID-19. In other words, the extra $600 in unemployment benefits went further in Mississippi than nearly every other state in the nation because Mississippi has more low-paying jobs than most states.

In addition, past COVID-19 stimulus payments of $1,200 and then $600 for individuals went a long way in Mississippi.

The payments of $1,400 — another round of enhanced unemployment benefits and tax credits for children in the American Rescue Plan recently signed into law by President Joe Biden — should help keep the Mississippi economy going strong.

In addition to the $1.8 billion in aid to the state, another $1.3 billion will go to Mississippi’s cities and counties.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann called it “a staggering amount of money.”

The city of Jackson is receiving the most at $46 million, while the village of Satartia is receiving the least federal funds at $11,273.61. In between Jackson and Satartia, Lee County, for instance, will receive $16.6 million, the city of Gulfport will garner $18 million, Alcorn County will get $7.2 million and Adams County will receive $6 million.

Meridian receives $8.2 million, DeSoto County gets $35.8 million and Greenwood gets $3.1 million to name a few others.

How policymakers on both the state and local levels opt to spend those funds could have long-term consequences for Mississippians.

The post Mississippi has option to be innovative with federal stimulus funds appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Variants Bracket appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A more infectious and vaccine-resistant variant strain of COVID-19 was detected in Mississippi on Friday. One person in Harrison County was found to be infected with the B.1.351 variant, which was discovered in South Africa in December and reached the United States in January.

There are currently 181 confirmed cases of the B.1.351 variant across 26 U.S. states and territories.

Scientists are concerned about the variant because clinical trials of the three vaccines approved in the U.S. are showing that they offer less protection against B.1.351 than other variants. People who recover from COVID-19 may be reinfected if exposed to B.1.351 because one of its mutations makes it harder for antibodies to latch onto. 

While more data is needed, preliminary studies have shown that despite any small decreases in overall effectiveness, the vaccines being administered in the U.S. still provide robust protection against the most severe outcomes of a COVID-19 infection. 

“This just reinforces our messaging how important it is to get vaccinated and protected now. Time is of the essence,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during a Friday press conference.

Dobbs also encouraged Mississippians to continue to follow preventative measures like masking in public, because limiting community spread is the best way to prevent new strains from gaining significant footholds in the state.

As infections from variants continue to surge in the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is preparing a plan to update vaccines if needed. This could include the development of a third booster shot by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech for their vaccines.

B.1.351 is the second variant strain of COVID-19 to reach Mississippi. Ten cases of the U.K. variant, B.1.1.7, have been confirmed in the state since mid-February. Preliminary studies in Britain have found this variant to be 30-50% more infectious and around 55% deadlier than the original strain of COVID-19. 

In Mississippi, 627,922 people — 21% of the state’s population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. More than 350,000 people have been fully inoculated since the state began distributing vaccines in December.

The post Vaccine-resistant COVID-19 strain detected in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

These are the first words I have typed on my shiny new laptop, and I am pretty pumped about it. It arrives, after all, at my favorite time of the sporting year. 

Spring is here and with it college baseball and soon the Final Four. They will play 16 games of March Madness on TV today. If I want, I can watch several of those games on this shiny new laptop, replete with a sharp picture and bright colors. It does not even resemble the manual Underwood typewriter on which I typed my first game stories all those years ago. My late daddy, who bequeathed me that Underwood, would be greatly amazed.

He would be excited, too. After all, the Masters is just around the corner, along with Major League Baseball. Our own golf courses are greening. Flowers are blooming. Every indication is we might be nearing the end of this god-awful pandemic that has so changed the way we play — and watch — sports.

But before I wax on about the future on this shiny new computer, I must first pay homage to the one that is retiring and bears the scars of 10 years of loyal service. You can scarcely read the letters on her keys. Indeed, she’d probably still be with me if I hadn’t pounded those keys so hard. When you learned to type on an Underwood manual, the adjustment to sensitive, 21st century keyboards apparently takes longer than a lifetime. 

My retiring computer was dependable almost to the end. She endured through three jobs, 10 March Madnesses and more deadlines than either of us care to remember. She couldn’t have enjoyed the deadlines any more than I did. You see, the less time I have to write, the harder and more furiously I type. Go figure.

And still, I had to replace her keyboard only once. 

She endured. She was a plugger. An old coach would describe her as solid and dependable, a team player. She endured Ole Miss winning the Sugar Bowl on deadline. She endured two NCAA Women’s Final Fours on deadline, several College World Series and nine Egg Bowls. She endured being lost in the Atlanta airport. Twice. She made it through a working, golf vacation in Ireland. I typed on that old computer in the Crow’s Nest at Augusta National, in a Tuscan villa, and at 30,000-feet above the Atlantic Ocean.

She outlasted three football coaches each at Mississippi State and Ole Miss and four at Southern Miss. Rick Comegy was the Jackson State football coach when I put her into service. Deion Sanders is the JSU coach as I take her out. There were three in between, five total.

As I mentioned, I began typing on a creaky, old Underwood that I still have in my attic. I was 13 and not quite five feet tall. I looked more like eight or nine. But I wanted to cover games for my hometown newspaper and the editors said I would need to learn to type. So I took a typing class at the university, and you should have seen the looks I got when I walked in that classroom.

I can tell you, for certain, it was a long climb to the press box with a manual typewriter before press boxes had elevators. The evolution of how sports writers type and send their stories has gone through several phases since. We used to type our stories and then read them over the telephone to somebody back on the copy desk. Often, in those early days, my stories thankfully were edited as I talked. 

Then came something called telecopiers, which transmitted the printed pages back to the office, often in blurry, almost unreadable condition. Then, there were these things called portabubbles, sort of a precursor to today’s computers. Those early portabubbles were sensitive to loud noise. Once, during a rowdy Alcorn-Mississippi State basketball game at Biloxi, my portabubble began spitting gibberish every time the crowd went crazy, which was about every 30 seconds in those Davey Whitney days. I lifted that damnable thing above my head and was about to heave all 25 pounds of it to mid-court when Orley Hood, bless his soul, snatched it out of my hands, thus saving my job and probably keeping me out of jail.

 “You’ll thank me later, Pards,” Orley said.

And so now, on my shiny new laptop I could almost throw like a frisbee, I am. Thanks, Pards.

The post Breaking in a shiny new toy at the absolute best time of the year appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi legislative leaders said tax collections are more than $500 million above the estimate used to set the current year’s budget and the state economy appears to be chugging along as lawmakers get down to setting a $6 billion budget for the coming year.

“We’re in great financial shape,” House Speaker Philip Gunn said after a Joint Legislative Budget Committee meeting on Friday. Lawmakers adopted “the big number,” the total amount of money they can spend as they haggle out a state budget over the next couple of weeks.

That big number is $5.93 billion — about $173 million, or 3%, more than lawmakers had estimated in November that they’d have to spend for fiscal 2022 that begins July 1.

“I want to be clear, this doesn’t mean (every agency) gets an across-the-board increase,” said Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. “… But lots of the cuts we made last year were about 2.5%, so this should restore those … But we will be looking at each budget individually to make those decisions.”

As for the $500 million cash on hand from the current FY21 budget, Gunn and Hosemann said that number may be artificially high because of $230 million in income taxes that normally would have been collected in the previous year were collected in the current budget year after filing deadlines were pushed back because of COVID-19.

Hosemann said he suspects the state budget also saw a boon because of “a significant infusion of federal money” from coronavirus relief funds Congress approved.

The rosy financial projections adopted Friday come as lawmakers debate a massive overhaul of the state’s tax system being pushed by Gunn and the House GOP leadership. It would eliminate the state income tax over the next decade, and increase sales, “sin” and other user or consumption taxes to make up the difference. Hosemann and the Senate have been lukewarm on the idea and killed the original proposal, although the House has attempted to revive it for more debate.

State Economist Corey Miller told the legislative budget committee on Friday that revenue collections continue to be strong for the current fiscal year despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Through February, state tax collections are $500.3 million or 14.7% above the estimate used by legislators in the 2020 session when developing the current budget.

Those surplus funds could be used when developing a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, though in recent years legislators have tried to direct such surplus funds to the rainy day fund, capital expense fund and for other one-time expenses.

Gunn and Hosemann said they plan to sock about $30 million into the rainy day fund this session, which would bring it flush to $558 million.

In addition to the $5.9 billion in tax revenue, legislators will also have another $500 million in funds from other sources, such as tobacco lawsuit settlement funds, that are used in the state-support budget.

The post Lawmakers say Mississippi economy is cranking, coffers flush as they begin setting budget appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippians are generally more open to getting a COVID-19 vaccination than they were in early January, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The poll from Millsaps College and Chism Strategies found that 63% of those polled said they will definitely or probably will get vaccinated. Another 13% reported already being vaccinated. Of the remaining people surveyed, 20% said they probably or definitely will not get vaccinated and 5% are unsure. Mississippians have reconsidered their stance on the vaccines since the same poll was conducted in January, when nearly half of survey takers said they may refuse to receive the vaccine or were unsure about it.

MAP: Where to get the COVID-19 vaccine in Mississippi

This change in public opinion is likely due to the dramatic increase in vaccine rollout over the past few months. People who may have been hesitant to receive a vaccine when they were first approved have seen friends, family and neighbors get vaccinated safely over the past few months.

“Voters are learning more about the necessity of the vaccines, how participation in vaccination will help the nation return to normal more quickly and receiving encouragement from medical and public health experts along with a noticeably different tone from federal officials. These things have truly helped move the needle for us,” said Dr. Nathan Shrader, chair of the Department of Government and Politics at Millsaps College.

The approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, in particular, has helped. The J&J vaccine only requires one dose and it was produced through conventional methods instead of the newer and less familiar mRNA vaccine technology. Factors like these have helped soothe many people with reservations about getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Mississippi became the second state to make immunization against COVID-19 available to all residents aged 16 and up on Tuesday. Last week, President Joseph R. Biden directed all U.S. states and territories to make all adults eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine no later than May 1st.

In Mississippi, 592,500 people — about 20% of the state’s total population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Nearly 330,000 people have been fully inoculated since the state began distributing vaccines in December.

READ MORE: Frequently asked questions about COVID vaccines in Mississippi

The post Most Mississippians now willing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, poll shows appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Signing Up appeared first on Mississippi Today.

No bill is currently alive in the Mississippi Legislature to continue the state’s Division of Medicaid past June 30.

The House and Senate have killed the other chamber’s bill that would re-authorize the program and make various changes to the agency that provides health care for about 800,000 poor children, disabled people, poor pregnant women and the elderly.

At this point, both chambers will have to by a two-thirds vote pass the same rules suspension resolution to revive a bill to re-authorize the Division of Medicaid and to make changes to the program. The process of passing that rules suspension resolution already has begun in both chambers.

“It is critical for the Legislature to come to agreement on language as the bill determines the cost and delivery of healthcare services provided to hundreds of thousands of Mississippians,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, said in a statement. “The Senate version contained important provisions related to increasing access to postpartum care up to 12 months, easing the process of becoming a healthcare provider, increasing transparency related to the participation of third parties in the state’s Medicaid program to ensure taxpayer dollars are well spent, and increasing reimbursement for community mental health centers.”

It is not unusual for Medicaid reauthorization bills to get caught up in conflict and have to be revived. In the past, issues that led to the impasse have included whether to impose additional taxes on hospitals to whether to expand Medicaid. While Democrats support expanding Medicaid, the issue does not appear to be among the reasons that the Republican leadership of both chambers killed the two Medicaid re-authorization bills this year. Thus far, Mississippi’s Republican political leadership has opposed efforts to expand Medicaid.

Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, has said the changes made in the Medicaid bill in the Senate re-authorization proposal would increase state costs for the Medicaid program by about $18 million annually. Those changes include extending postpartum coverage to 12 months instead of the current 60 days.

The House bill has language that establishes a commission to govern the Division of Medicaid. Currently, the governor appoints an executive director who must undergo Senate confirmation to lead the agency.

Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House Democratic leader, said the current demise of the bills should not be of too much concern.

“I think it is part of the legislative process,” he said for both sides to have strong positions “and not to capitulate for the sake of efficiency. We have time to work out everything.”

Each time there is an impasse in the program there is talk of the governor running the agency via executive order without legislative consent. But those talks have never materialized into an actual effort of a governor issuing such an executive order. Past official opinions from the attorney general have found that the governor could not run Medicaid without legislative authorization.

Johnson said he believes creating a commission to govern Medicaid is worth fighting for because it would bring autonomy and transparency to the health care agency.

“My Grandmother Morgan used to say people could become fractious,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory. “That is what is happening here. The House and Senate have become fractious. Hopefully they will make up enough before the session ends to pass something…But this not that unusual and it has to run its course.”

The post Bills to keep Medicaid alive dead for now in Legislature appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In response to the ongoing water crisis in Jackson, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith introduced legislation Tuesday that would authorize federal funding for water infrastructure upgrades.

The Emergency Water Infrastructure Improvements Act taps three federal agencies to provide the city with a combination of loans, loan forgiveness and grants for water infrastructure projects. This federal response comes as state lawmakers weigh their options for addressing the crisis in the final weeks of the 2021 legislative session. 

“Providing safe and reliable drinking water is a local responsibility, but there are federal programs and funds available that can be used to address these types of problems. I cannot sit back and watch Jackson schools, businesses and residents go without water,” Hyde-Smith said in a press release announcing the bill. 

A historic winter storm in mid-February froze water plant equipment and burst many pipes in the capital city, and tens of thousands of residents — mostly Black — were without water for nearly three weeks. Today, city officials say “most” residents have had water service restored, though the entire city is still under a boil water notice. 

In her announcement, Hyde-Smith joined the chorus of elected officials misrepresenting the current crisis as solely a failure of local leadership.

“The weeks of hardship on Jackson residents is upsetting and completely unacceptable. Jackson’s water woes became a crisis with the February ice storm, but the hard truth is that the crisis was just waiting to happen after decades of neglecting necessary repairs and maintenance,” Hyde-Smith said. “It’s time to put that neglect behind us and work toward fixing the problem.”

Under Hyde-Smith’s bill, different levels and types of funding would come through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Here’s what each of them would provide:

• An additional $22 million in funding will be authorized for Jackson under the Army Corps of Engineers Section 219 program.

The Corps would be able to use these additional funds to assist in the design and construction of environmental infrastructure projects.

• An additional $150 million in funding will be added to the EPA Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund (DWSRF). With these funds, the EPA makes grants to States, which in turn issues loans to municipalities for drinking water improvements. 

It is unclear how much of this funding would be directed to Mississippi, much less Jackson. The entire state of Mississippi received just $26,315,000 of the $2.7 billion in DWSRF funding made available in 2020.

Public water systems deemed eligible for this additional funding will be designated as “disadvantaged communities,” which qualifies them for loan subsidization and principal forgiveness. Eligible systems are also required to be located within states that had at least five major disasters in 2020 and suffered damages to water systems in recent winter storms. 

The bill also stipulates that a maximum of 15% of these DWSRF funds can be used to purchase and install new water meters and modernize water billing systems. The city is currently running at a deficit of around $2 million each month in water collections revenue after a failed contract with the company Siemens left the city with more faulty water meters and billing issues than the city had before hiring them to overhaul these systems. 

• The bill directs the Secretary of Commerce to direct no less than $25 million in EDA Economic Adjustment Assistance(EAA) grant funds to “eligible systems.”

This funding would come from EAA grant funding from the CARES Act that has yet to be appropriated. 

Other Mississippi lawmakers on Capitol Hill have yet to sign on to Hyde-Smith’s proposal. In her announcement, Hyde-Smith emphasized a need for bipartisan support to get the legislation passed.

“It is a responsible and worthwhile plan that will require the support of the Democrats in Congress and the administration to get it done, and I look forward to their cooperation,” Hyde-Smith said.

The post Hyde-Smith proposes federal funding to address Jackson water crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Senate killed Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn’s proposal to eliminate the state income tax and increase sales taxes without a vote on Tuesday, letting the measure die in committee under a deadline.

House GOP leaders, angered by the Senate move, late Tuesday inserted the tax overhaul language as an amendment into a “bond bill” that would borrow money for projects statewide.

“The Senate has punted the ball,” House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, told House members on Tuesday. “… They killed this bill. What has the Senate done? They stayed up until 1 a.m. talking about marijuana. They’ve spent endless hours trying to eliminate business incentives that have worked for years.”

“It’s time for bold action, time to continue to fight,” Lamar, a co-author of the tax swap plan, said before the House voted 89-22 to revive the tax measure.

But the tax plan’s eventual passage remains very doubtful as the Mississippi legislative session enters what is scheduled to be its final weeks. The House’s altering of the bond bill to include the tax overhaul could also make it subject to procedure and rules challenges in the Senate.

Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, declined to take the bill up in his committee on Tuesday, the deadline for it to pass the full Senate. He said the Senate will instead call for a study committee to examine the issue over the summer and make recommendations to the Legislature next year.

House Bill 1439 would phase out the state’s personal income tax, through exemptions, over 10 years. It would cut the sales tax on groceries from 7% to 3.5% within five years. To balance these losses, it would increase the state’s 7% sales tax to 9.5% and increase taxes on many other things, such as farm and manufacturing equipment, by 2.5 percentage points.

Senate leaders, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, have questioned whether the bill — introduced by the House relatively late in the session with little heads up to the Senate — has been thoroughly vetted for “unintended consequences” to the economy and state revenue.

“What I want to see is a thorough examination — by people smarter than me — of what impact this will have on our economy, what it will mean for instance, for productivity,” Harkins said. “The decisions we make will have an impact in a lot of areas, and we don’t want to be back here in four or five years trying to redo our taxes because we got something wrong.”

For instance, Harkins said, most owners of limited liability corporations pay personal income taxes instead of corporate taxes. If the personal income tax is eliminated, many businesses would likely switch to LLC formation, which would skew the House’s projections of balancing loss of income tax revenue with other tax increases.

Harkins said that an initial analysis of the House plan that Hosemann requested from the state economist showed that in its first year, initial phaseout of income taxes would cost about $269 million in revenue, but increases in sales, “sin” and other taxes would bring in an additional $1 billion — a huge “net plus” for a measure that is supposed to be “revenue neutral.” He said the analysis showed it would be seven or eight years before the cuts and increases in taxes balance out.

“Apparently the economist is revising numbers he’s given us — might have left out some things that are in the bill — but that’s all the more reason to wait and examine this more closely,” Harkins said.

Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, also questioned whether the cuts in income taxes, which will be phased in only if revenue “growth triggers” are met, will really balance out with increases in other taxes or net most taxpayers any savings.

“It sounds more like a Ponzi scheme to me,” Scott said.

As the Senate was coming into session Tuesday morning, Speaker Gunn was leaving the lieutenant governor’s office, after apparently making an 11th-hour pitch for the measure.

“We feel very strongly in the House that elimination of the income tax is a good thing for Mississippi,” Gunn said. “I personally do not think there is a bigger policy issue that we’ve ever done or ever will do.

“(The Senate) has some questions,” Gunn said. “We have answers for every one of those. My wish is that they would move this bill along, keep it alive and let us answer questions and work on it.”

Hosemann in a statement on Tuesday said: “It is always important to consider how we as conservatives can leave more money in taxpayers’ pockets. We plan on having a thorough joint conversation about tax reform this summer. A study should focus on truly broadening the base, incentivizing and rewarding hard work, strengthening economic development and training, and right-sizing government.

“We should also realize a system of taxation drives economic decisions for individuals and for businesses, and plan accordingly.”

After Harkins said he would not take up the bill, Gunn told media that House leaders were looking for ways to revive the legislation before the session ends.

“That’s what we intended for (the Senate) to do, keep this alive,” Gunn said. “There were lots of things they could have done to keep it alive … so we could have sat down and worked through any concerns.”

Economic experts and thinks tanks have offered mixed analysis on the impact of the tax overhaul. Some predict it would spur the economy, taking away a “tax on productivity.” Others say it would tank it by increasing taxes on business “inputs” and cause tax pyramiding with its increased sales and other taxes. Still others say it would unfairly place more of the tax burden on the state’s poorest people in shifting to consumption taxes.

Gunn and others point to economic booms in Texas, Florida, Tennessee and other states without income taxes. But Harkins on Monday said, “We’re not Tennessee, Florida or Texas — we’re Mississippi … We need to look at the data and most importantly do something responsibly to put the state in the best place competitively.”

The original measure would have been a tough sell on the Senate floor, facing opposition from many groups. While some conservative policy groups support the measure to phase out the state income tax while raising sales, sin and other taxes, many powerful lobbies — such as those representing farmers, small businesses, manufacturers and teachers — have voiced opposition.

Lamar said his amendment on Tuesday made some changes to address that. He removed the measure’s increases of 2.5 cents on the dollar for farming, logging and manufacturing equipment. As a result the amounts of the first round of income tax cuts would be reduced and the total phase-out of income taxes might take a year or two longer.

Gov. Tate Reeves, who himself advocates eliminating the income tax, said he opposes commensurate increases in other taxes in the House plan. He believes economic growth, and belt tightening by government, would cover any lost tax revenue.

The post Senate kills Mississippi income tax elimination. House tries to revive it appeared first on Mississippi Today.