Mississippi Today
Tax cuts, rebates fizzle from lack of GOP support in Legislature
Tax cuts, rebates fizzle from lack of GOP support in Legislature
With a Wednesday deadline for action on major tax cuts, elimination or rebates, Republican House and Senate leaders said such measures don’t appear likely, largely due to lack of support from fellow Republicans who hold supermajorities in both chambers.
“There’s tremendous support to eliminate the tax on work (income tax) in the Mississippi House of Representatives,” Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, said Tuesday. “… But a small group in the Republican Caucus doesn’t want us to take it up, and we are on notice the Democrats are going to block vote against it. It’s a three-fifths vote, so that’s where it’s at.”
In the Senate, Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann had vowed to push for income tax rebate checks for Mississippians. But Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, on Tuesday said many in the Senate are more focused on “paying off debt, not taking on more debt, infrastructure needs and a lot of other financial issues to consider.”
READ MORE: Phase out income tax or cut taxpayers checks? GOP lawmakers, governor disagree
Hosemann late last week had lamented lack of support for his tax rebate checks proposal in the Senate and said, “I still think it’s a good idea.”
The Legislature, after much internecine Republican fighting that threatened to derail much other legislation, last year passed the largest income tax cuts in state history, to be phased in over four years. House Speaker Philip Gunn had pushed for eliminating the state income tax. Hosemann had pushed for more measured cuts. The end result: Mississippi after the cuts are fully made in 2026 will have one of the lowest income taxes in the nation.
READ MORE: 5 things to know about the Great Mississippi Tax Cut Battle of 2022
But tax revenue has continued to pour in at record pace, and there’s a $3.9 billion surplus in state coffers. This prompted Gunn to re-up his vow to eliminate the personal income tax, and Hosemann to advocate one-time rebate checks for taxpayers and talk of cutting or eliminating the state’s sales tax on groceries, among the highest in the nation.
Hosemann and Senate leaders said the national and state economies are in turbulent, inflationary times with recession possible, and that much of the state surplus is from unprecedented federal spending that isn’t likely to continue. They warn that fully eliminating the income tax in such uncertain economic times is foolhardy. Many state business leaders, including the state’s chamber of commerce,shared this trepidationlast legislative session.
Gunn and and House leaders said Mississippi’s economy is on a roll that will continue, and that eliminating the personal income tax would help the state compete for economic development. Gunn points to nine states with no income tax, including Florida, Tennessee and Texas, as having thriving economies and growing population.
Wednesday is the deadline for first floor action on revenue and appropriations bills. Since late last week, media, lobbyists and other observers had hovered around Ways and Means and Finance meetings, expecting them to roll out major tax cut or rebate bills. Both Lamar and Harkins had indicated such measures might be forthcoming.
On Tuesday, both indicated they are not forthcoming.
Leaders in both chambers on Tuesday said tax cuts could still be in the offing this session, and that bills are still alive where cuts or breaks could be added as amendments. But that becomes far more unlikely after Wednesday’s deadline, when introducing new tax cut legislation would require a two-thirds vote to suspend rules, a monumental hurdle.
Lamar on Tuesday said a “small number, maybe 10 or 12” of the 122-member House’s 76 Republicans indicated they didn’t want to take up income tax elimination. Other legislative sources reported more than double the number of Republicans Lamar reported were balking.
“I do chalk a lot of it up to it being an election year, although you would think during an election year they would want to eliminate the tax on work,” Lamar said.
Lamar said he would still be open to any tax cuts, including sales taxes on groceries.
“What I can tell you is the Mississippi House of Representatives has voted for income tax elimination, voted to cut car tags in half, and voted to cut grocery taxes in half. The Mississippi House of Representative’s commitment to tax reform is unquestioned … I believe with all my heart that ending the income tax, joining the nine other states that don’t have it, is the right policy for the future of Mississippi.”
Harkins said: “I thought we had a deal on taxes last year — to be worked in over four years. I feel like we settled the tax issue last year for the time being.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1848

Feb. 15, 1848

Sarah Roberts, a 5-year-old Black American, entered an all-white school in Boston, only to be turned away. She wound up entering four more white schools, and each time she was shown the door. And so she found herself walking from home, passing five all-white schools on the way to an all-black school the city of Boston was forcing her to attend.
This angered her father, Benjamin, one of the nation’s first Black American printers, and he sued the city. Robert Morris, one of the nation’s first Black lawyers, took up the case.
“Any child unlawfully excluded from public school shall recover damages therefore against the city or town by which such public instruction is supported,” Morris wrote.
He and co-counsel Charles Sumner argued that the Constitution of Massachusetts held all are equal before the law, regardless of race, and that the laws creating public schools made no distinctions.
Sumner wrote, “Prejudice is the child of ignorance … sure to prevail where people do not know each other.”
In 1850, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the racial segregation of public schools. The attorneys brought the issue to state lawmakers. In 1855, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned segregated schools — the first law barring segregated schools in the U.S.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
State, MS Power extend life of coal unit to energize data centers

Last week, the state Public Service Commission unanimously approved a special contract that will extend the life of a Mississippi Power coal unit in order to meet energy demands for a recently announced data center project in Meridian.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced last month a $10 billion investment from Compass Datacenters. The Dallas-based company will build eight centers, and in exchange will receive multiple tax exemptions, Mississippi Today reported. The project will be located within the Mississippi Power service area. The utility, a subsidiary of Southern Company, serves 192,000 customers in the southern and eastern parts of the state.
Following a 2020 directive from the PSC to get rid of excess generation capacity, Mississippi Power initially planned to close the two coal-powered units at Plant Victor J. Daniel — in Jackson County, about 10 miles north of Moss Point — by 2027. In 2023, though, the utility pushed the retirement date back a year in order to support demand needs for its sibling company, Georgia Power, Grist reported.
Then on Jan. 9, Mississippi Power informed the PSC that, in order to power the Compass Datacenter facilities, it would have to delay closure of at least one of the coal units, as well as “potentially other fossil steam units,” until the mid-2030s.
Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps told Mississippi Today that the PSC’s job is to meet demand, and that until Mississippi Power has the option to include nuclear power in its arsenal, “we’re going to need all the power we can get in that service area.”
“We can’t stop economic development because we’ve got to wait, you know, 15 years for some nuclear power in the service area,” Stamps said.

Throughout the last couple decades, the country has moved away from coal as an energy source because of its contribution to global warming but also because of air and water pollution associated with coal-burning facilities. A 2023 study from George Mason University, the University of Texas and Harvard University found that exposure to fine particulate pollutants known as PM2.5 from coal plants contributed to 460,000 deaths around the country between 1999 and 2020, twice the mortality rate of PM2.5 exposure from other sources.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, whose district includes Plant Daniel, called the facility a “fixture of our community” because of the jobs and tax revenue it provides. He said he wasn’t aware of any health concerns related to air emissions from the plant.
“I don’t hear from any constituents that say, ‘Hey, we don’t want this here,’” England said.
England added that Plant Daniel retiring units could potentially hurt its tax assessment, meaning less revenue for public needs like the local school district. He also pointed to emission “scrubbers” that Plant Daniel and other coal facilities have added in recent years. The same 2023 study found that scrubbers have dramatically decreased sulfur dioxide emissions as well as air pollution-related deaths.
In addition to Compass Datacenters, Mississippi Power also entered into a special contract to supply power for a plywood manufacturer, owned by Hood Industries, in Beaumont, Mississippi.
The two deals, a spokesperson for Mississippi Power said, necessitate keeping the coal and other units set for retirement alive.
“We are committed to keeping the Mississippi Public Service Commission and our customers up to date and will present additional details in our upcoming 2025 Mid-Point Supply-Side Update,” spokesperson Jeff Shepard said via email. “These incredible economic development projects will create a significant number of jobs and bring billions of dollars of investment to southeast Mississippi.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Legislation to license midwifery clears another hurdle

A bill that would establish a clear pathway for Mississippians seeking to become professional midwives passed the House after dying in committee several years in a row.
“Midwives play an important role in our state, especially in areas where maternal health care is scarce,” said Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus and author of the bill. “I’m happy that House Bill 927 passed the House yesterday and urge our senators to join us in passing this much-needed legislation.”
Despite the legislation imposing regulations on the profession and mandating formalized training, many midwives have voiced their support of the bill. They say it will help them care more holistically for women and allow them new privileges like the ability to administer certain labor medications – and will open the door to insurance reimbursement in the future.
“We have so few midwives integrated in the system and so few midwives practicing in the state,” explained Amanda Smith, a midwife in Hattiesburg who went out of state to receive her professional midwifery license. “We believe that licensure really will help create a clear pathway so people know exactly how to become a midwife in Mississippi.”
It isn’t guaranteed that the bill would make midwifery more accessible to low-income women. But licensure makes it more likely.
Currently, neither Medicaid nor private insurance reimburse for unlicensed midwifery services. Licensing professional midwifery wouldn’t necessarily mean that insurance companies would immediately start reimbursing for the services, but it’s the only way they might.
A new federal program is seeking to make midwifery reimbursable by Medicaid.
Mississippi is one of 15 states chosen by the federal government to participate in a new grant program called the Transforming Maternal Health Model, which began in January 2025 and will work to expand access and reimbursement for services – including licensed midwifery.
The bill has historically faced opposition both from those who think it does too much, as well as those who think it does too little.
To those who think it overregulates the profession, McLean says her loyalty lies with her constituents and making sure they have the most transparency when seeking birth options. Currently, anyone can operate under the title midwife in the state of Mississippi – with no required standard of training.
“We are legitimizing (professional midwifery) … As a legislator, it’s my duty to try to protect the citizens of Mississippi,” McLean said. “And by putting this legislation forward, it helps to inform those clients that would want the services of a midwife but don’t know how to choose.”
As for those who think it does too little, McLean says the bill would leave the details up to a board – established by the bill and made up mostly of midwives – who would be able to decide requirements for professional midwifery better than a room full of lawmakers.
“There’s a lot of men in here that know a lot about birthing babies,” McLean said during a lively floor debate Thursday.
The bill now advances to the Senate.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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