JUNE 27, 2009
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JACKSON — Gov. Haley Barbour has summoned Mississippi lawmakers back to the Capitol for a special budget session starting at 2 p.m. Sunday, just three days before the state’s new fiscal year begins.
“While I regret the need to call the Legislature in on Sunday, everyone should agree we have an ox in the ditch,” Barbour said in announcing the session Saturday.
House and Senate negotiators had still not agreed Saturday on how to fund Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the needy. Barbour has been saying for weeks that he would not call a special session until the entire budget was ready. He altered that stance Saturday, saying he did not want the stalemate over Medicaid “to keep other departments and agencies unfunded.”
The Republican governor controls the special session’s agenda, and so far he has included consideration of budgets for “special-fund” agencies that get their money from fees, such as the Department of Transportation and the Public Service Commission. He’s also asking lawmakers to plug holes in some agencies’ budgets for the fiscal year that ends Tuesday.
Barbour is asking lawmakers to approve Mississippi’s second cigarette tax increase this year. The first, which he signed into law in May, increased the excise tax by 50 cents a pack — from 18 cents to 68 — on all brands of cigarettes. The new proposal would increase the excise tax by another 25 cents on cheaper cigarettes made by companies that did not participate in the 1997 settlement of Mississippi’s massive lawsuit against larger tobacco companies.
Read complete article at Commercial Dispatch.
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