Efforts to increase the number of majority-Black legislative districts were thwarted Tuesday by the Republican majorities of the House and Senate.
The redistricting plans developed by the Legislature’s Republican majorities were approved Tuesday. The House approved its leadership’s redistricting plan 81-37 with most of the chamber’s Democrats voting against the proposal.
The Senate vote — 37-5 to approve — was more nuanced, and all Democrats voted for its final passage. But Black senators said the plan diluted Black voter strength and attempted unsuccessfully to amend it.
The main opposition to the Senate plan — and hours of debate on Tuesday — came from a few Republicans angered that the plan, because of population loss in southwest Mississippi, put Sen. Melanie Sojourner, R-Natchez, into a majority Black district.
Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, a close political ally of Sojourner, unsuccessfully attempted to amend the Senate map to help Sojourner and had heated debate with some fellow Republican senators after he accused them of “racial gerrymandering.” The five votes against the Senate plan were Republicans allied with McDaniel and Sojourner.
Sen. Kathy Chism, R-New Albany, said she prayed on the issue and God told her, “Child, I sent you to Jackson … as a Republican.”
“As a Republican I am concerned about the district’s increase in (Black voting age population) now being more than 60%,” Chism said. “That makes a Republican, pro-life district vulnerable to becoming a pro-choice Democrat district. It’s time we stand as Republicans for Republican principles.”
But other Republicans said the maps were redrawn fairly, based on population changes and law, and noted Sojourner’s district was essentially shifted to what will be a heavily Republican district in Rankin and Smith counties because of population growth there.
The two chambers are expected to rubberstamp the other chamber’s plan in the coming days and complete the redistricting process that must be conducted every 10 years to adhere to population shifts found by the decennial U.S. Census.
Black legislators in both chambers unsuccessfully offered amendments to increase the number of African American majority districts.
“All we are saying is let a redistricting plan reflect the population and people of Mississippi,” said Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, who is the House minority leader. “We ought to be in this body in a balanced manner that takes care everybody in the state.”
The plan developed by the House and Senate Republican leadership maintained “the status quo” in terms of African American majority districts – 15 of the 52 seats in the Senate and 42 of 122 in the House.
“A map that maintains the status quo simply dilutes Black voting-strength in Mississippi,” said Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, the Senate minority leader. Simmons offered an amendment that was voted down to add an additional four Black majority districts in the Senate.
In the House, Johnson offered a plan that would have added five additional majority-Black districts in the House and 10 additional districts that provided African Americans more influence by increasing their numbers significantly. The House leadership plan has few districts with a Black population between 30% and 40%. Johnson’s plan would have significantly increased that number.
African American members said the plan offered by the leadership “packed” the Black population into fewer districts to dilute their strength.
“What we are trying to do is say you don’t have to pack all of the African Americans in one district,” Johnson said.
Rep. Jim Beckett, R-Bruce, who headed up the redistricting process in the House, countered, “I can tell you I think we did everything we could possibly do to draw districts fair to the members of the chamber, to the state and to the regions of the state.”
Under the leadership’s plans, 29% of the Senate districts are majority African American while 34% of the House districts are. Based on the 2020 Census, the state’s African American population is 38% while the white population is 59%. The remaining percentage fits in “other” categories including multiple racial groups, under the categories developed by the U.S. Census.
House and Senate leaders late Monday said they were close to deals on budget, federal stimulus spending and other measures, but said they would have to extend deadlines for final negotiations as the 2022 Mississippi legislative session draws toward a close.
Lawmakers are expected to vote Tuesday to extend the session “on paper” because they couldn’t meet Monday’s midnight deadline to pass budget bills. Still, they hope to finish work and end this year’s session by Friday.
Still being finalized is a nearly $7 billion state budget for the fiscal year that starts in July, and a plan to spend most of $1.8 billion in federal American Rescue Plan Act pandemic stimulus money from Congress.
“Chairman Hopson and Chairman Read are busy right now working on (appropriations bills) but obviously they will not finish” tonight, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, said referring to House Appropriations Chair John Read and his Senate counterpart, Briggs Hopson.
Legislative leaders do not believe they will have any trouble garnering the two-thirds vote of both chambers needed to push back the Monday night deadline.
“I do believe we will reach a budget (agreement) tonight or sometime tomorrow,” House Speaker Philip Gunn said Monday. “… But the physical process of printing the bills — having analysts read them, proof them, then the actual printing, can take 48 hours. Friday — that’s my guess (on ending the session).”
The budget agreement is expected to include about $40 million for a state employee pay raise under the state Personnel Board’s “SEC Squared” program to bring state government salaries closer to the regional averages. Lawmakers already have passed on to the governor the largest teacher pay raise in state history.
Over the weekend, lawmakers also sent to the governor the largest tax cut in state history, one that will eliminate more than $500 million in personal income taxes for Mississippians by 2026.
Legislative leaders said they’ve also agreed on most details of spending $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion of the state’s ARPA money and holding back $300 million to $400 million.
The bulk of the state’s ARPA money — about $750 million — would go to local governments and rural water associations for infrastructure projects, House Speaker Pro Tem Jason White said. Millions would also go to health, mental health and children’s services to help the state meet long-running federal court mandates to remedy substandard services and conditions. Other spending will likely include a new nursing center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and about $50 million for workforce development.
White said lawmakers are currently considering a $25 million match for $25 million the city of Jackson has earmarked for work on its troubled water and sewer system. City leaders have said fixes to the system will cost much more, and White said this would be a first step in addressing the problems.
Numerous general law bills are still being debated in the final days of the session, Gunn said, including an equal pay bill — with Mississippi the last state in the nation not to provide recourse for employees paid less based on sex — and reinstating the voter ballot initiative process shot down by the courts.
Happy official sixth anniversary to Mississippi Today! I’ve had the joy of leading this organization through ups and downs over five of our six years. It hasn’t always been easy, but the heart behind our mission is what fuels us. I want to thank each of you, our readers, who have supported us by sharing our stories, following us on social media and donating to our newsroom. It is only by your support that the last six years have been possible.
As a final look back, I wanted to share some of our top coverage from last year. In 2021, we continued our coverage of the MDHS welfare scandal. Investigative reporter Anna Wolfe reported on the money that Brett Farve and others involved in the case still owed the state. We continue to follow this story and have an entire page dedicated to tracking those involved and if they are being held accountable.
We also had extensive coverage of the Jackson water crisis that left many in the Metro area without adequate access to water. Our reporter Alex Rozier followed the city’s water deficiencies, while our political reporters followed the lawsuit drawn against the city and our education reporter followed how the water crisis affected Jackson’s school system. The coverage is still being followed into this year.
Thank you for taking a journey back in time with us this past week as we celebrate the hard work of our reporters dedicated to making Mississippi a better place. We find encouragement in the fact that so many of you share the same passion for the state and take the initiative to support our mission in any way you can. Here’s to many more years serving the great people of Mississippi and beyond!
To our current members: Thank you, truly, for your generous support. Mississippi Today is for the people and powered by the people. Our work would not be possible without you and our stories would not have meaning without your willingness to share your experiences with our reporters.
To our readers who are not yet members: Thank you for joining us on this journey. If you’d like to help us celebrate and create more meaningful projects going forward, create a recurring donation today. We’re almost to our goal of welcoming 60 new members in celebration of our sixth anniversary.
Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.
Upon learning news of a legislative income tax cut agreement — what will be the largest single tax cut in Mississippi history — Gov. Tate Reeves was left with nothing but the ability to post on social media.
The governor, who took advantage last week of legislative infighting and publicly advocated for a full elimination of the income tax, was effectively sidelined when lawmakers agreed on a deal behind closed doors on Saturday.
Reeves called the tax plan “a good step” but criticized Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann for demanding a more measured approach to cutting the income tax. Speaker of the House Philip Gunn had embraced Reeves’ plan to eliminate the income tax, but Gunn ultimately trashed it during legislative negotiations with Hosemann.
“Strong action that will change our state for the better takes time and passionate partners,” Reeves tweeted. “For transformative change, we need our state’s Lieutenant Governor to work with bold conservatives.”
For Reeves, Gunn and many Republican elected officials, the final tax cut plan that lawmakers agreed to did much less than they wanted.
All eight statewide offices and the three most powerful seats in Mississippi — governor, lieutenant governor and speaker — are held by members of the Republican Party. The Mississippi Republican Party enjoys a supermajority of both the Senate and House, meaning the party in power can pass any bill they want without a single Democratic vote.
Why, then, can’t Republicans agree on and pass full-throated reforms and other major policies? Because there are three distinct factions within the Mississippi Republican Party, each with clear voter support and led by power brokers who can swing votes and muddy the political waters.
On any given policy debate, one faction pushes and the other two pull. They are rarely in agreement on really anything. The boundaries of the factions are constantly moving, and as the national Republican Party continues its steady march to the right, many longtime Mississippi Republican elected officials have either been forced to move right with the party or are now considered moderate because their positions are unchanged. Still, many Republican elected officials often try to fit in two or more groups at once.
The intra-party struggle for power and a clear identity reared its head during the income tax debate this legislative session as seemingly no Grand Old Party leader got exactly what they wanted. Nearly every Republican is leaving Jackson disappointed in some regard, and political observers are left trying to sift through what exactly happened the past three months.
Here are the three Republican Party factions and examples of their influence during the debate on tax cuts this session:
The Establishment
This is the largest faction of the Mississippi Republican Party. It wields the most influence at the Capitol, and it is certainly home to most Republican elected officials in the state.
These Republicans adhere to fiscal conservative principles championed by national party leaders: lower taxes, less government spending, deregulation of the economy. On social issues, they are driven by what they believe to be conservative evangelical principles.
Gov. Reeves and Speaker Gunn reside solidly within the Establishment, though both have tried often to pander to voters to their right. Reeves and Gunn both strongly supported full elimination of the income tax, though they had differing ideas of how to accomplish that.
Many rank-and-file legislative Republicans supported the plan to eliminate the income tax. Every House Republican voted for some form of Gunn’s plan, and many state senators were open to it.
The Establishment benefits from the unabashed support of conservative media outlets — both radio and online — that will target Republicans who aren’t “in line” with Establishment leaders. Several right-leaning interest groups and powerful lobbies also worked on behalf of the Establishment to chastise Republicans who were against the plan.
The Moderates
This wing of the Republican Party is left of the Establishment and is growing by the term at the Capitol.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is the most powerful elected official of the Moderates, who believe that many principles championed by the Establishment can sometimes be too risky or too far. They believe that fiscal policy shouldn’t be reformed quickly, especially in a poorer state like Mississippi that is always especially susceptible to challenging national economic times.
On both fiscal and social issues, they are more inclined to listen to their colleagues across the aisle about who might be affected by certain policies. For example, Senate Republicans had initially pushed as part of their tax cut package lowering Mississippi’s highest-in-the-nation grocery tax — a tax that disproportionately affects economically disadvantaged Mississippians.
Hosemann, with the help of five or six Republican Senate leaders, staved off Gunn’s plan for full elimination of the income tax with their “this does too much, too quickly in uncertain economic times” argument.
“Our constituents expect us to fund core government services in infrastructure, education, healthcare and other areas,” Hosemann said in a statement Saturday after the compromise passed. “Our budget experts have assured us we can continue to do this and significantly ease the tax burden on hardworking Mississippians.”
Hosemann is taking heat for this from both the Establishment — evidenced by Reeves’ tweet — and the Far Right.
The Far Right
This wing of the Mississippi Republican Party is on the far right side of the political spectrum. These elected officials are uber conservatives — “Reagan Republicans” aren’t usually conservative enough in their view. They, like the Moderates, also appear to be gaining in number at the Capitol, and Establishment Republicans tend to fear them in election years.
They believe that there should be little government spending altogether, that no taxpayer should help pay for services that other taxpayers benefit from. The government is the big, bad enemy of working people, and it should be completely stripped of its size and might so that citizens may take full control of their lives.
This wing of the Mississippi Republican Party is led most notably by state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who has unsuccessfully run for U.S. senator and has earned a national following among fellow right-wing conservatives. McDaniel and his supporters have panned Hosemann in recent days for blocking a full elimination of the income tax, using terms to describe Hosemann like “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and even calling him a Democrat.
“Hosemann has stubbornly refused to consider eliminating the state’s income tax even though Governor Tate Reeves, Speaker Philip Gunn, the House of Representatives, and conservatives across Mississippi have championed the effort,” McDaniel wrote on Facebook last week. “Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Delbert Hosemann also refused to endorse Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.”
Will it matter in 2023?
A tax cut — the largest in the state’s history — isn’t something any Republican regardless of faction is likely to lose on by the time statewide and legislative elections happen in August and November of 2023.
But there is sure to be a lot of politicking between now and then.
The Far Right wants Hosemann’s head on a stake. McDaniel and his loud supporters have wanted the state senator to run for lieutenant governor for years. As the national Republican Party continues moving to the right, Mississippi supporters of this faction appear to be frustrated right now with everyone, including the Establishment. While they can certainly be loud on social media and during rallies at the Capitol, they have never proven to have enough statewide influence at the ballot box in Mississippi to do anything about it.
The Moderates continue picking up legislative seats, particularly in suburban districts with higher educational attainment. It also appears that many incumbent Republicans at the Capitol are getting more comfortable with owning their more moderate tendencies — if not publicly, then privately while trying to shape policy behind closed doors. Hosemann, at least going into his term as lieutenant governor, had the highest approval rating of any statewide elected official in Mississippi, so any serious threat to his 2023 re-election would be a surprise.
The Establishment continues its dominance in the state and hasn’t really shown any signs of slowing down. Reeves will continue trying to placate both the Establishment and the Far Right, although the latter has appeared a losing strategy for him since he was elected governor (especially apparent during the pandemic and the 2020 state flag change). Gunn is still flirting with a 2023 primary challenge of Reeves.
The bottom line and true as ever in Mississippi: Republicans have Election Day support from everyday voters solely because of the word “Republican” behind their names. Will there ever be a broad enough understanding of the intra-party struggles and factional nuances that could spur sea change in GOP primaries?
Senate Judiciary B Chair Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, said he will decide early this week whether to take up nine House bills restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies.
Fillingane said it is probable that at least some of the suffrage bills will be taken up in his Judiciary B Committee with the intent to send them to the full Senate chamber for consideration.
“We’re looking at them now,” said Fillingane.
The state’s 1890s’ Jim Crow-era Constitution strips voting rights of people convicted of certain felonies. The right to vote can be restored via legislation approved by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Legislature and the signature of the governor.
Mississippi is one of less than 10 states that do not automatically restore the right to vote of people convicted of felonies at some point after they complete their sentence.
Mississippi Votes, a grassroots group that promotes voter access, said in a statement it is time to reform the process of restoring suffrage.
“Not only is the process unclear but it is also not equitable,” the statement read. “Mississippians who may be attempting to restore their voting rights have to make a journey to the state Capitol to retrieve a paper application, fill it out by hand, and then return it to their representative. There is no online form of the application that can be downloaded or emailed, provided by the state Legislature.
“The state Legislature has also made it impossible to gather any information about the process. Individuals would have to either ask a legislator directly for information, of which there is no uniform response or ask a third-party organization to help them get a better understanding of how the process works.”
Some of the people who are seeking to have their voting rights restored in these bills are being aided by Mississippi Votes.
In the 2021 session, the House passed 21 bills restoring voting rights. All but two of those were killed in the Senate Judiciary B Committee. At the time, Fillingane said that the Judiciary B Committee has guidelines that prohibit the restoration of voting rights to those convicted of violent crimes and those convicted of embezzling public funds.
House Judiciary B Chair Nick Bain, R-Corinth, who passed the suffrage bills out of committee said last year that is essentially the same criteria he uses.
Bain said he does not believe any additional bills restoring voting rights will be taken up in the House this session, which is scheduled to end Sunday.
The prohibition on voting is part of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution — added as one of several attempts to prevent Black Mississippians from voting. Framers at the time admitted they were incorporating crimes into the Constitution to ban voting rights that they believed Black Mississippians were more likely to commit. With African Americans still being disproportionately convicted of crimes, that continues to be the effect of the disenfranchisement language.
A 2018 analysis by Mississippi Today found that 61% of the Mississippians who have lost their rights to vote are African American, despite the fact that African Americans represent 36% of the state’s total voting-age population.
The Constitution contains a list of crimes for which a person convicted of a felony loses voting rights. Disenfranchising crimes are: arson, armed robbery, bigamy, bribery, embezzlement, extortion, felony bad check, felony shoplifting, forgery, larceny, murder, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, rape, receiving stolen property, robbery, theft, timber larceny, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, statutory rape, carjacking and larceny under lease or rental agreement.
There are other crimes, such as crimes connected with the sale of drugs, where a person convicted of a felony does not lose the right to vote and actually is eligible to vote while incarcerated.
Bain offered legislation this session to clarify that people who have their felony conviction expunged through the legal process should also regain the right to vote. He said in some jurisdictions the right to vote is restored with the expungement but in others it is not.
It appeared that the legislation clarifying the expungement process had died in the Senate, but Bain was able to revive the bill later in the process, It is now part of a bill providing pay raises to district attorneys and judges.
The call came Sunday afternoon shortly after news that Mississippian Chad Ramey, the former Mississippi State golfer from Fulton, had won the PGA Tour’s Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic.
The caller had a question: “When was the last time before today that a native Mississippian won an official PGA Tour event? You’re supposed to know those kinds of things.”
The most obvious answer would be Jim Gallagher Jr. of Greenwood, whose nine professional victories include five on the PGA Tour, including The Tour Championship in 1993.
Rick Cleveland
One problem there: Gallagher was born in Pennsylvania, raised in Indiana and played his college golf at Tennessee. He once won the old Magnolia Classic in Hattiesburg, but he is not a native Mississippian. To which Gallagher, now a Golf Channel commentator, no doubt would tell you: “I’m better than that. I live here by choice.”
So, if not Gallagher, then whom?
My next guess would have been Glen Day, who grew up in Poplarville, and won the 1999 MCI Classic at Hilton Head, defeating Golf Hall of Famer Payne Stewart and Jeff Sluman in a sudden death playoff with a birdie on the first extra hole.
That happened 23 years ago last month, which would constitute a long PGA Tour victory drought for Mississippians, except for the fact that it turns out Day was born in Mobile, not Poplarville. He is not, technically, a native Mississippian.
Oh boy, I thought, this is going back a long, long ways. The last Mississippian to win on the Tour had to be either Pete Brown or Johnny Pott. Drivers were still wooden and golf balls were wound, not solid, when Pott and Brown won on the Tour.
Pott, one of golf’s great gentlemen, now 86 and living in California, won five times on Tour, the last time in the 1968 Bing Crosby National Pro Am, beating the great Billy Casper and Bruce Devlin in a playoff. Pott grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and played collegiately at LSU. And this is something I did not know until I looked it up: Pott was born in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
Pete Brown
So that leaves Pete Brown, the first African American to win a PGA Tour event. Brown, who died in 2015 at the age of 80, won two PGA events, the last being the Andy Williams San Diego Open in 1970. On Feb. 1, 1970, Brown, born in Port Gibson and raised in Jackson, shot a final round 65 and then defeated Englishman Tony Jacklin in a playoff and win the $30,000 first prize. Yes, over the last 52 years, PGA purses have soared.
Brown remains one of the greatest Mississippi sports stories of all time. The son of sharecroppers, he learned the game caddying at a golf course he was not allowed to play. What’s more, he learned with a left-handed 3-wood and a right-handed 5-iron, both of which he retrieved from a lake. He did not own his first set of clubs until he was 20, by which time he had also overcome polio.
So, if my math is correct, when Chad Ramey clinched victory Sunday it had been 52 years, one month and 27 days since a native Mississippian won on tour.
Now, that’s a drought.
Here’s the good news: It won’t be nearly that long until it happens again.
Hattiesburg’s Davis Riley finished second at the Valspar Championship the previous week. He’s going to win on the PGA Tour. He’s too good not to.
Ramey, who was a picture of consistency the last two years on the Korn Ferry Tour, has the game to win multiple times. Hayden Buckley of Belden finished 13th in the same tournament Ramey won Sunday. Buckley — OK, so he was born in Chattanooga — has the game to win on Tour, as well. Ramey, Riley and Buckley give Mississippi three of the top 80 money winners on tour currently.
Recently, Jackson’s Wilson Furr qualified for full privileges on the Canadian PGA Tour, known as the MacKenzie Tour. Former NCAA champ Braden Thornberry still plays the Korn Ferry Tour. All these young guys, in their 20s, have enormous potential. And there’s an impressive crop of college and junior golfers behind them. Put it this way: It will not be 2074 before a Mississippian wins on the PGA Tour again.
Mississippi Today’s political team discusses the tension between the state’s top three leaders about how much income tax to cut, what annual budget to write, what projects to fund with federal stimulus and how to redraw legislative districts. As the scheduled end to the 2022 legislative session looms, how will lawmakers actually pull this off in time?
The number of Mississippi’s majority Black legislative districts will remain the same under the redistricting plan unveiled and approved Sunday afternoon by the Joint Redistricting Committee.
The maps still must be approved by the full membership of the Mississippi Legislature.
NOTE: Scroll to the bottom of this post to see the proposed House and Senate maps.
While some key changes were made in the maps approved Sunday afternoon, the 52-member Senate will maintain 15 Black majority districts and the 122-member House will keep 42. According to the U.S. Census, the state’s Black population is 38%, while the white population is 59%.
The Legislature, based on federal and state law, must redraw the 174 House and Senate districts every 10 years to match population shifts found by the 2020 U.S. Census. The full House and Senate chambers will consider the maps in the coming days before the scheduled end of the session on April 3.
There was little debate Sunday afternoon as the plans were approved in committee. That could change as the proposals are debated before the full chambers and members have more time to ascertain how the changes impact their re-election efforts and the partisan makeup of the Legislature.
Redistricting often is viewed in terms of party politics — whether the redrawn map provides an opportunity for one of the political parties to gain seats. Republicans, holding large advantages in both legislative chambers and thus controlling the redistricting process, appeared to be satisfied with a map maintaining near the status quo.
In the Senate, Melanie Sojourner, R-Natchez, viewed as one of the chamber’s more conservative members, was placed in the same district with Albert Butler, D-Port Gibson, in what will be a 60% Black majority district. With one district being eliminated in southwest Mississippi with the combining of Butler’s and Sojourner’s districts, another district was added in what is viewed as the heavily Republican area of Rankin and Smith counties.
Before the plans were unveiled, Gov. Tate Reeves, who in reality has no official role in the redistricting process, said on social media: “Any plan that reduces the number of districts where Republicans can compete in favor of more easy Democrat wins should not be proposed — much less approved — by either chamber of the Legislature.”
Senate President Pro Tem Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, who headed up the upper chamber’s redistricting effort, said merging the districts in southwest Mississippi and creating the new district in Rankin and Smith counties created a stronger Republican district.
“That district, for 36 of the last 44 years, has had a Democratic senator,” Kirby said, referring to Sojourner’s district. “Because of a loss of population in that area, and to maintain the number of Democratic — majority minority — and Republican districts, we moved that … Where we moved (Sojourner’s) district to is a much stronger – one of the strongest – Republican districts in the state.”
Kirby added, “I think most were happy with their districts. There were maybe four or five that had some issues. I’d say 90% were happy with their districts … I think this is a fair plan … It’s probably not what everyone wanted, but it is a fair plan.”
In the House, District 20 in Itawamba, Lee and Monroe counties was moved to DeSoto County in northwest Mississippi and District 33 in north-central Mississippi was moved to Harrison County on the Gulf Coast.
“You can’t help where people live and move,” said Joint Redistricting Chairman Jim Beckett, R-Bruce. “Those two counties, DeSoto and Harrison, each grew in excess of 20,000 people. When they grow like that, and others lose population. It causes a big shift.”
District 33 is represented by long-term House member Tommy Reynolds, D-Water Valley, and District 20 is represented by Chris Brown, R-Nettleton. Both are reportedly not running for re-election.
Reynolds is one of two Democrats in the House representing white majority districts. With the moving of that district, it might give Republicans an opportunity to pick up a seat on the Gulf Coast.
Longtime Rep. John Read, R-Gautier, said his district did not change greatly, and he wasn’t sweating it regardless.
“In my district, they can’t go south, because you hit water,” Read said. “You can’t go east, because you hit water … Mine has been shrinking, shrinking in number of square miles, but it’s still the same percentages. But it doesn’t matter — you just have to get out there and run, knock on doors. They either send you back, or you stay home.”
The Mississippi Legislature in a bipartisan vote with very little debate on Sunday passed the largest tax cut in state history.
House Bill 531 now goes to Gov. Tate Reeves, who is expected to reluctantly sign it into law, although he had been adamant that lawmakers eliminate, not just cut, the state personal income tax.
“Moving to a flat four percent income tax puts more than $500 million in recurring dollars back in taxpayers’ pockets and makes Mississippi one of the most competitive in the nation in terms of income tax rates,” said Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
Hosemann has for two years thwarted Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn’s effort to phase out the income tax while raising sales taxes. Hosemann and Senate Republican leaders said they wanted more prudent, studied tax cuts instead of overhauling tax structure during uncertain economic times.
Gunn vowed to continue to push for income tax elimination, but said the cuts passed Sunday are “a key first step.”
The measure passed Sunday will:
Reduce taxes, when fully implemented over four years, for an individual making $40,000 by $417 a year. For a married couple making $80,000, that would be $834 a year.
Eliminate the state’s 4% tax bracket on people’s first $5,000 of taxable income starting 2023. The 5% tax on remaining income will drop to 4.7% for 2023, then 4.4% for 2025 and 4% starting in 2026.
Give Mississippi, when fully implemented, the fifth-lowest marginal tax rate for states that have income tax — although other states are also considering cuts or elimination.
Reduce state income tax revenue by $525 million a year starting in 2026.
The legislation contains language that the plan will be examined by 2026 with an eye toward personal income tax elimination.
The Senate voted 39-10 to pass the measure on Sunday, with five Democrats joining the Republican majority in favor. The House passed the measure 92-23. Of the 42 Democrats in the House, 23 voted no while seven either did not vote or voted present. The three House independents voted for the proposal.
For an issue that has dominated the last two state legislative sessions, the measure was passed quickly and quietly Sunday. The House passed it in less than three minutes with no questions asked on the floor and a round of applause after the vote.
House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, said: “This will go down as the largest tax cut in the history of the state. It sets us on a path toward eliminating the Mississippi individual income tax within a reasonable time period.”
In the Senate, some Democrats on Sunday reiterated concerns they’ve had about large tax cuts.
Senate Minority Leader Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, questioned why proposals to cut the state sales tax on groceries — which had previously been part of both House and Senate tax cut plans — were no longer on the table.
“The decision was made to focus on working individuals and giving them money back on income taxes,” said Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, R-Flowood. “… This is affecting every Mississippian, whether you’re a teacher … or someone who cuts grass, who gets up and goes to work every day.”
On questioning of whether the cuts would cripple the state budget and lead to cuts in services such as road repairs and education, Harkins assured colleagues that’s not likely.
“We’ve got record revenue coming in, and we are giving taxpayers part of the money back,” Harkins said. “We are still providing the largest teacher pay raise in state history, and making investments where we need to.”
Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, told Harkins, “All right, I’ll just take you at your word on that,” but then later voted against the bill.
Gov. Tate Reeves’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comments on the tax cut on Sunday.
Over the weekend after the agreement was reached by House and Senate negotiators, Reeves lamented on social media that: “I still believe we can and should eliminate the income tax. The fiscal environment is right. Sadly, the political environment in the MS Senate is not … For transformative change, we need our state’s Lieutenant Governor to work with bold conservatives.”
But the governor also said: “This is a good step. It is a win at the beginning of this fight. It is not the end.”
