Legislative Update 56

July 12, 2009

Dear Friends,

The legislature completed its budget work on Friday with a special session that lasted from 10 in the morning until about 3:30 Friday afternoon. My morning started at 3 a.m. at home in Pascagoula when eleven week old Gray announced his displeasure. He was mad and loud and, as sometimes happens, he woke up his three year old sister who joined him in the early morning cry fest. While Laurie tended to Gray, I tried to reason with Ellen and around 3:30, both were back to sleep. Of course, by this time, I was wide awake and decided that 4 in the morning was as good a time as any to start the sojourn to Jackson.

We started the session by swearing in the newest member of the House, Rep. Wilbert Jones, who represents District 82 in Lauderdale County. I have enjoyed getting to know Mr. Jones and his family and believe he will be a good addition to the House.

Soon after the swearing-in ceremony ended, the House passed three bills: House Bill1 set the budget for the Public Service Commission approving three new positions for the Commission; House Bill 2 set the budget for the Public Utilities staff; and House Bill 3 would have used money from the Health Care Expendable Fund to pay the Medicaid match for our Community Mental Health Centers. The Senate amended the first two bills and the House ultimately agreed with the changes. The Senate didn’t take up the bill dealing with Community Mental Health Centers.

Public Service Commission

You will recall that in my last post, I referred to the fight over additional Public Service Commission staff as silly. After all, the PSC regulates telecommunications, utilities, and enforces the no-call list and they were only asking for three employees to help them do their job. It wasn’t until I looked inside the numbers that I realized exactly how ridiculous this fight was. Many of you have heard the Governor and others rail against the new PSC staffers by saying that we shouldn’t make new hires in the current economic climate. Sound reasonable, right? Well consider this: during the last special session, the Governor and the legislature approved 353 new positions for various state agencies. If the economic climate made it cost prohibitive to hire new staff, why didn’t that same logic apply to these 353 new positions? Also, since we had already approved these new jobs, why would we treat the PSC differently, especially when their job is so important to utility ratepayers? I asked these and several other questions and never got a satisfactory answer.

The bill that was ultimately approved denied the PSC’s request for additional staff. It will, however, allow them to fill three positions that are currently open and give them the flexibility to keep staffers by moving them to lower paying positions within the Commission. At the end of the day, all I could do was apologize to our own Commissioner, Leonard Bentz, and tell him I was sorry we couldn’t do better by his agency.

Community Mental Health Centers

Following the last special session, the Governor used his line item veto authority to remove Medicaid match funding for our Community Mental Health Centers. Mississippi has 15 of these centers that employ roughly 3,700 people. These centers provide mental health care for uninsured Mississippians and are the only providers in the state that have to pay a majority of their Medicaid match. Without additional funding, these centers will have to cut $2.2 million from programs not included in Medicaid such as children crisis services. The Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association has also warned that taking away this funding will create an additional strain on jails that will now have to house more people suffering from mentally illness.

In an effort to head off this healthcare and public safety issue, the House passed a bill that would have closed the funding gap with money from the state’s Health Care Expendable Fund. We had hoped that this bill, along with calls from healthcare workers and sheriffs across the state, would be enough to add mental health funding to the special session call. It wasn’t. The bill died in the Senate. Let’s hope the House, the centers, and our sheriffs are wrong.

How to Contact Me

As always, I invite you to call me on my cell phone at 228-326-7649 or e-mail me at bjones@house.ms.gov. For real time updates, you can also follow me on Twitter under the user name “brandoncjones”. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, you can check out my page at http://twitter.com/brandoncjones or by following the link on my website. Please feel free to forward this report to folks in our district and let me know if I need to add someone to my list.

I will also be posting my updates and House related news on my campaign website at www.electbrandonjones.com.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve.

Brandon