Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann did not rule out passing a version of the massive tax restructuring bill approved last week by the Mississippi House even though he cited what he said were multiple problems with the legislation.
Still, Hosemann, speaking publicly about the bill for the first time, left the impression that if the bill makes it out of the Senate before the March 16 deadline it will be dramatically different than the proposal that passed the House. And, based on Hosemann’s comments, it is far from a certainty that the bill will survive the deadline.
“I have not had one senator come to me and tell me he wants to pass this bill,” said Hosemann, speaking Monday during a video conference to Mississippi State University’s Stennis Institute of Government and the Capitol Press Corps. “…The Senate is not Nancy Pelosi. We don’t adopt it and find out how it will work after we pass it.”
Later, responding to a question, Hosemann said he was not belittling the approach of Speaker Philip Gunn who introduced and passed his Mississippi Tax Freedom Act in less than 24 hours. When asked why there was not more communication between House and Senate leaders before the bill was taken up, he said, “You will have to ask the speaker that.”
But he said, “I don’t think it any secret the speaker and I are personal friends. He has a tremendous heart and tremendous love for Mississippi, but that doesn’t make him right all the time.”
Hosemann praised the speaker for bringing forth legislation aimed at providing tax relief and reducing government spending.
“I am receptive to that idea,” he said. But “This bill is extremely long and has several unintended consequences.”
He said such unintended consequences could lead to an economic slowdown and a reduction in state revenue that might impact vital state services.
The bill, authored by Gunn, would phase out the state’s personal income tax over a 10-year period, reduce the sales tax on groceries by one-half to 3.5% and increase the sales tax on most other retail items by 2.5 cents on each dollar spent. The state’s current sales tax is 7% on most general sales tax items with lesser amounts such as 1% to 3% on primarily “big ticket” items, such as farming equipment, airplanes, vehicles and manufacturing equipment.
The bill would provide a near immediate substantial tax cut, exempting in 2022 the first $50,000 in income for a single person and the first $100,000 for a married couple.
Hosemann said the bill could negatively impact farmers, manufacturers and others. He cited retirees who generally do not pay a state income tax as a group that could be negatively impacted by the sales tax increase. He did not take into account the fact they would be paying less in grocery taxes under the legislation.
Despite citing issues with the bill, Hosemann did not rule out passing a version of the legislation this session.
He said he has asked the state economist “to model out” what could be the consequences of the legislation. Hosemann also did not rule out the issue being studied during the summer, presumably with the purpose of tackling similar legislation in the 2022 session.
Gov. Tate Reeves has proposed phasing out the state income tax, which provides about one-third of the state general fund revenue, without raising other taxes to make up for the loss revenue. Reeves said the tax cut will spur economic growth, leading to new revenue for the state.
Gunn has said his proposal would “broaden” the tax base by levying taxes on consumption rather than income. He has argued that if the bill becomes law, an average Mississippian earning $50,000 per year would have to spend about $82,000 in a year to pay as much in sales taxes as the taxpayer would save from the income tax cut.
Thousands of residents in Jackson are still without water service two weeks after a historic winter storm slammed the state, freezing and bursting many water pipes in the capital city.
Officials cannot estimate how many residents are without water in Jackson, the state’s largest city that is at least 80% Black, and they cannot say definitively when water service will be restored. Pockets of west Jackson and a majority of south Jackson are the areas hit hardest by service disruptions — a reality officials attribute to the distance between these neighborhoods and the city’s water treatment plants.
Over the course of the water crisis, 80 water main breaks and leaks have been reported across the city. As of Sunday night, the city’s water maintenance department had completed 51 repairs. Crews completing the repairs have described city pipes, some over 100 years old, as brittle, underscoring the need for a vast overhaul of the city’s aging infrastructure.
“We are glad to see that the process is working. While it isn’t working to the speed we would like to see, we are glad to know that we are on the right track,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said during a Sunday press conference. “We’re not happy until we can restore water service to every single last person in this city.”
Meaningful infrastructure repairs have been put off for decades by city leaders, who have had to craft budgets in recent years with a diminished tax revenue base. Lumumba has estimated that updating Jackson’s water system to prevent future crises would cost around $2 billion, which is more than six times the city’s annual budget.
“If Jackson don’t do something to fix all of its aging pipes here, I’m afraid we just might be the next Flint, MI,” one resident said on the city’s Facebook page.
City crews traveled around areas of south and west Jackson yesterday, opening up fire hydrants to release trapped air out of the water system that had built up after water reserves were depleted during the winter storm.
Charles Williams, Jackson’s public works director, said on Sunday that the city had restored water pressure to its targeted 90 pounds per square inch (PSI) at the OB Curtis water treatment plant. Along with maintaining that pressure, recovery now depends on their ability to distribute water throughout the system.
Many residents have complained on the city’s Facebook page and support lines that car washes near their homes are still operating while their neighborhoods are still without water.
“Stop saying conserve and do something. Stop the car washes. We have lived with inadequate water for years,” a resident wrote on the city’s Facebook page.
Citizens who have experienced significant leaks due to burst pipes are asked to keep copies of the plumbing statements for their repairs so they can apply for a leak adjustment to their bills from the Water Sewer Business Administration (WSBA).
The entire city is still under a boil water notice, and residents with water services are being asked to lower their consumption as much as possible to speed up the restoration of city reserves.
“Ultimately what we need from the state and federal government is long-term support so we can weatherize these facilities,” Lumumba said.
No update has been given on when or if the state will request federal disaster relief to aid state and local relief efforts. On Feb. 23, Gov. Tate Reeves said that county and municipal agencies were working on damage reports and that he would request federal aid when those were completed. As of Monday afternoon, damage reports were still coming in to the Governor’s office. For Reeve’s to request a federal emergency declaration, a cumulative threshold of $4.5 million in reported damages has to be reached.
Last week, the state secured more tanker trucks of non-potable water for Jackson, and Reeves deployed the Mississippi National Guard to assist with Jackson relief efforts.
Non-potable (flushing) water will be available on Monday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the following locations:
Forest Hill High School – 2607 Raymond Road, Jackson, MS 39212
Raines Elementary School – 156 N. Flag Chapel Road, Jackson, MS 39209
Callaway High School – 601 Beasley Rd, Jackson, MS 39206
Provine High School – 2400 Robinson St, Jackson, MS 39209
New Mt Zion Missionary Baptist Church – 140 Maple St, Jackson, MS 39203
Davis Road Park – 5901 Terry Road Byram, MS 39272
Walton Elementary School – 3200 Bailey Avenue, Jackson, MS 39213
Speaker of the House Philip Gunn sits down with Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau to discuss his massive tax proposal, which would eliminate the state’s personal income tax, cut the highest-in-the-nation grocery tax, and raise the sales tax and several other taxes.
Mississippi’s voter identification requirement could be at risk if the state Supreme Court strikes down the medical marijuana initiative approved by voters in November.
After all, the same process employed to put medical marijuana on the ballot was used in 2011 to enact a mandate that Mississippi voters must have a government-issued photo identification to vote.
Would it not make sense that if one was improperly on the ballot then so was the other?
Perhaps the Supreme Court could or would walk a tight rope and rule that it is too late to challenge the voter identification requirement since it has been in effect for a longer time.
In the case of medical marijuana, the city of Madison filed a lawsuit before the November general election challenging the process used to gather the signatures to place the issue on the ballot.
When the initiative process was placed in the Constitution in the early 1990s, Mississippi had five congressional districts. To successfully place an initiative on the ballot, signatures must be obtained equally from all five of those districts. The state now has four congressional districts making it mathematically impossible, the city of Madison contends in its ongoing lawsuit, to meet the constitutional mandate.
For countless initiative efforts since Mississippi lost a U.S. House seat based on the 2000 Census, initiative sponsors had been striving, based on the instructions they received from the Secretary of State, to gather one-fifth of the signatures from the five congressional districts in effect in the 1990s. Everyone accepted that as a commonsense approach.
But then along came the city of Madison and its lawsuit. The Supreme Court punted on deciding the issue before the November general election, but it has now agreed to hear oral arguments on the case in April.
If the Supreme Court does strike down the medical marijuana initiative, it only makes sense that some group would file a lawsuit demanding that voter identification also be found invalid.
Incidentally, the only other initiative to make it completely through the process and be approved by voters since 2000 was a Farm Bureau-sponsored proposal that prevents the government from taking private property through eminent domain for the use of another private entity. Farm Bureau argued that eminent domain should only be used to take private property for public use, such as for roads. Voters in 2011 agreed with Farm Bureau by an overwhelming margin. That year, 63% voted in favor of the requirement that a person had to have a government-issued photo identification to vote, and 73% approved the Farm Bureau proposal limiting the use of eminent domain.
It could be less likely that the eminent domain initiative would be challenged should the court rule against medical marijuana. But what is a certainty is that many voting rights groups oppose voter ID, saying it has a history of suppressing voter turnout among minorities. On the other hand, state Republicans hailed the voter ID requirement as a major victory when it was passed.
Many state Republican leaders now are hoping the state’s high court strikes down the medical marijuana initiative. Many state leaders have lamented that the initiative severely limits the ability of state and local governments to regulate and to tax what could be a lucrative marijuana industry.
Earlier this session, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann expended considerable political capital to garner the votes to pass a bill in the Senate to create a medical marijuana program that would go into effect should the Supreme Court strike down the initiative. Hosemann’s effort to pass the bill led to the Senate being in session to near 2 a.m. earlier this month.
The bill, which is now pending in the House, places many more restrictions on the medical marijuana program than does the initiative. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Senate bill gives the state the authority to levy taxes on the program, with a large portion of the revenue from the taxes designated for education.
It almost appears the Senate is sending a message to the Supreme Court justices that voters will not be too mad if the initiative is struck down because there would still be a medical marijuana program under the Senate bill. Interestingly, Hosemann counted his enactment of the voter ID program approved by voters as one of his crowning achievements during his tenure as secretary of state.
To ensure that achievement remains intact, Hosemann might need to develop a voter identification bill just in case that proposal also is struck down by the courts.
We want to share the experiences of Mississippians getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Whether you’ve already received both doses or are still trying to book an appointment, this form is for you.
Marie Gaston, Lakisha Caldwell and Briunna Mangrum manage the front and back of the house.
Fried foods are a staple in soul food cuisine.
Customers at Table 6-4-72 can order to-go or dine in for the buffett.
Table 6-4-72 moved to this current location in 2020.
Briunna Mangrum, left, serves people’s food while Lakisha Caldwell, right, cooks the food.
Marie Gaston, left, and Lakisha Caldwell, right, prepare a burger order.
Lakisha Caldwell has been working at Table 6-4-72 for months.
Briunna Mangrum helps a customer pay for his food.
Table 6-4-72 offers an all-you-can-eat buffet during the lunch hours.
Briunna Mangrum takes orders over the phone for to-go plates.
Table 6-4-72’s menu includes baked beans, potato salad and pork steak.
Lakisha Caldwell helps owner Marie Gaston prepare and cook the food.
Customers line up at the cash register to pay for their food.
Marie Gaston still remembers all the food her parents cooked when she was growing up. The aromas of fried chicken, green beans, cabbage, candied yams and fried potatoes often floated from the kitchen. Gaston said her parents cooked full meals like this nearly every day.
Marie Gaston, left, Briunna Mangrum, center, and Lakisha Caldwell, right, keep the restaurant functioning from open to close. Credit: Brittany Brown
Among the youngest of her three sisters and five brothers, Gaston, a Water Valley native, said her parents cooked not only for her and her eight siblings, they also cooked for other families in their tight-knit neighborhood.
“We were in a subdivision with five other houses, and it was more like with our big family, everybody else came,” Gaston said. “So Mama always cooked this big ol’ pot of different foods. It was something.”
As she grew older, Gaston, like many children, eagerly joined her parents in the kitchen, helping prepare the food. Often she was tasked with peeling potatoes and cleaning chitterlings.
Marie Gaston arrives at Table 6-4-72 at 7 a.m. every morning to prepare and cook food for the day. Credit: Brittany Brown
Today, this is what Gaston does for a living — preparing, cooking and serving soul food — at her restaurant Table 6-4-72 in Water Valley.
“It was something I wanted to do from watching my mom,” Gaston said.
Table 6-4-72, named in honor of Gaston’s birthday, opened last year at its current location next to Larson’s Cash Saver on South Main Street. She arrives at her restaurant every morning at 7 a.m. to prepare for a busy day serving a lunch buffet, to-go plates and dinner from a rotating menu lined with soul food favorites like barbecue chicken, pork steak, green beans, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, potato salad, cornbread and a variety of pies and cakes.
“I just wanted something fulfilling, and that’s why I went into soul food,” Gaston said. “I want to cook food that’s going to stick to your ribs.”
Catarina Passidomo is the Southern Foodways Alliance Associate Professor of Southern Studies and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Mississippi. Credit: Catarina Passidomo/The Center for the Study of Southern Culture
The term “soul food” originally came to be in the civil rights era, during the Black freedom struggle in the United States and the Caribbean. The food itself can be connected to the period of chattel slavery in the U.S., with roots stemming to West Africa, where many enslaved Africans were brought to the U.S., according to Catarina Passidomo, a University of Mississippi professor of anthropology and Southern studies.
Soul food as cuisine is rooted in the creative ways enslaved African Americans in the Deep South pulled together meager food rations to create a delicious, home-cooked meal. Much of what we know today as soul food — rice, beans, greens and pork — are a direct reflection of this.
“Soul food as an idea has held particular significance for the descendents of enslaved people, for whom it signified physical and cultural survival, creative autonomy and resistance in the face of oppression,” Passidomo said.
Coffeeville native Katherine Pollard, 65, grew up surrounded by family, who, like Gaston’s, would share food with the community. Coffeeville was a segregated town for the majority of Pollard’s childhood, until she was about 14 years old, and without easy access to transportation and big box grocery stores like today, sharing food was not just a generous gesture. It was a necessity for survival.
Coffeeville native Katherine Pollard grew up in a family that shared food with the community. Credit: Katherine Pollard/Black Families of Yalobusha County Oral History Project Archive
“Everybody took care of everybody. If somebody killed a hog, everybody in the community got meat,” Pollard said in a 2019 oral history interview. “They just did everything. That’s probably the only thing mom would go to the store and buy was flour because at one time they made their own meal.”
Similar to Pollard, James Wright’s family relied on the land to survive, growing crops like corn and cotton to sell and to eat. Wright, now 60, grew up in Water Valley seeing his father work as a sharecropper while also sustaining the family farm to provide for the family of 13 — a mother, a father and 11 children.
James Wright grew up in a family of 13 who relied on the land to eat. Credit: The 1977 Ole Miss Yearbook/Black Families of Yalobusha County Oral History Project Archive
“We grew a garden because we were self-sufficient. Everything that we ate and we used, we raised,” Wright said in a 2019 oral history interview. “And I hear people talk about being hungry, not having. I have never gone to bed, might not have had an extravagant meal, but I always had food.”
Passidomo said the clear connection between food, land and labor have been largely lost in today’s society.
Although food plays a fundamental role between community and culture, in today’s society, people are seeing less and less the direct relationship between food systems and the land and labor used to produce it, Passidomo said. Yalobusha County natives Wright, Pollard and Gaston say they all grew up knowing the value of soul food’s importance to Black culture and its connection to the land.
However, families, friends and communities can’t join together and share food and culture as they once were able safely do so before COVID-19.
“The pandemic has reminded many of us how much we value sharing meals with friends and family,” Passidomo said.
Marie Gaston, left, Briunna Mangrum, center, and Lakisha Caldwell, right, sit outside after a busy lunch rush at Table 6-4-72. Credit: Brittany Brown
That’s part of what Gaston loves about being a restaurant owner — the power food has to bring people together. For her, it reminds her of her childhood, when her eight siblings, two parents and the families from the neighborhood would gather at the dining room table to share a meal. She said now many of her customers have become like family, regularly dining in, ordering takeout and making conversation.
“Sometimes now, I still have to tell myself ‘it’s COVID’ because I love to embrace people, love to show the love,” Gaston said.
Editor’s note: A full archive of photos and additional oral history interviews, like the ones mentioned in this article, are available online in The Black Families of Yalobusha County Oral History Project Archive, which emerged after Dottie Chapman Reed, Water Valley native, and author of the column and book “Outstanding Black Women of Yalobusha County” in the North Mississippi Herald, and Jessica Wilkerson, a former history and Southern Studies professor at the University of Mississippi, collaborated. In the spring 2020, Dr. B. Brian Foster, a sociology and Southern Studies professor at the University of Mississippi, took over as director of the project and will collaborate with UM students and Reed on its expansion in the next phase of the project known as the Mississippi Hill Country Oral History Collective.
There is a guy who is super worried about my car’s extended warranty. Or at least I think he is because he keeps calling me about it. So when I heard there would be a review of the state’s infrastructure (which was battered hard by the recent winter storm), I figured maybe we should get one of those fancy extended warranties.
A new report from economists with the state’s university system says Mississippi’s economy, personal income and population would decline under Gov. Tate Reeves’ proposal to phase out individual income tax over a decade.
The analysis, led by state economist Corey Miller for the University Research Center division of the state Institutions of Higher Learning, used economic modeling to analyze Reeves’ proposal to phase out the state’s individual income tax. The report was conducted before the proposal the state House passed this week to phase out the income tax while increasing sales and other taxes, but the URC did include a separate analysis of raising the state sales tax to cover reductions in income taxes. That showed “slightly positive” effects on gross domestic product, income and population over the same period.
Findings of the URC report by state economists on the straight income tax phase-out included:
Total revenue collected by the state would decrease each year from 2022 to 2035 if the state individual income tax is phased out over the next decade per Reeves’ plan. This would equal $1.745 billion by 2035.
The phase out, without a commensurate increase in sales taxes, would bring a decrease of 11,735 jobs, or 1%, by 2035.
The state’s real GDP would see a loss of $709 million, or .7%, by 2035 and would continue to decrease beyond then.
Population would decline by 33,382 people by 2035, or about 1.1% of the current population.
Real personal income for the period would decline by 1.2%.
The URC modeling to phase in a sales tax increase — going from 7% to 10.75% by 2031 — as the individual income tax is phased out included:
Total revenue collected by the state would see an increase of $48 million by 2035, higher during some intervening years.
Real state GDP would increase about $98 million by 2035.
Personal income would see slight increases and population would see a maximum increase of 10,028 people in 2029, down to 6,774 people by 2035.
The URC report, titled “Fiscal and Economic Implications of Changes to the Sales Tax and Individual Income Tax in Mississippi,” was conducted using a fiscal and economic model created by Regional Economic Models Inc. the report said. It took into account “indirect effects” of tax changes, such as people spending more, but also saving more as income rises from tax cuts and private sector jobs — at least early on — replacing those lost from government cuts.
The report noted that Reeves’ income tax elimination plan — included in his executive budget recommendation to lawmakers — was vague or “unformulated” in some areas.
Reeves advocates phasing out the state’s individual income tax without raising other taxes, and said economic growth — in part spurred by the tax cuts — would cover the lost revenue. Reeves said the phased elimination of the lowest bracket of income tax — passed when he was lieutenant governor in 2016 — shows that all personal income taxes could be phased out over time without a corresponding increase in other taxes.
The House Republican leadership is pushing a measure to phase out the individual income tax over 10 years, but with increases in sales taxes — to 9.5% — and other taxes to offset the cuts. The House plan also would cut the sales tax on groceries from 7% to 3.5% within five years.
Empower Mississippi on Thursday released a year-long report based on modeling both Reeves and the House plans. It was authored by Jorge Barro, an economist at the Baker Institute at Rice University; Joseph Bishop Henchmen, of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation; and Russ Latino, President of Empower Mississippi.
Barro said: “In either case there are positive effects, higher income … economic growth.”
But Latino said Empower’s study showed that large increases in sales or other consumer taxes would not be required to eliminate income taxes without tanking the state budget.
In a statement Empower said its analysis showed: “… that Mississippi has struggled over the last decade, with the lowest median household income in the country, the second-lowest labor force participation rate, and stagnate real GDP and population growth. Meanwhile, revenue to the state government has increased by nearly a third, and Mississippi has the 17th highest tax burden in the country.
“Comparatively, the nine states without an income tax have a tax burden that is roughly half that of Mississippi, while experiencing far greater revenue growth. … The median household income in the nine income tax-free states is 56 percent higher than Mississippi’s and higher than the national average. The total economic growth in these states is a full order of magnitude greater than Mississippi’s, and considerably greater than the national average. Perhaps most importantly, these states have seen population growth of 13 percent over the last decade, more than double the national average and 6,500 percent greater than Mississippi.”
