A funny thing happened when the Mississippi Legislature ended its 2016 session in April. Scarcely anything was done to address the serious issues facing our state. That’s hardly surprising, of course. It happens every year.
What was funny is that this time the regular people were actually paying attention and complaining. Legislators just hate it when people complain, you know.
The handful of people who run the state — House Speaker Phillip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and their eel-spined committee leaders in both houses — seemed stunned by the idea that people were actually paying attention. They quickly organized a couple of hand-picked committees to address two of the most critical and neglected issues — the state budget crisis and school funding.
We would like to report that these committees were committed to exploring all possible solutions, considering suggestions from all interested parties, inviting the lowly regular citizens to fully participate in these discussions and making all materials under consideration open to the general public.
But that is as far from the truth as a turnip is from a tow truck.
First, in the tax committee, and now in the education reform committee assigned to come up with a new K-12 school funding formula for the Legislature to ignore, we have found that there is no discernible commitment to transparency. This is not an honest effort.
The simple truth is that the handful of people who run this state have already made up their minds what they are going to do and are determined to do it with as much secrecy as possible.
Last week, when the education committee was asked to provide its contract with EdBuild, a consulting firm hired by the state to make recommendations on a new school funding formula, the state bosses moved quickly, assembling the House Management Committee, which approves contracts entered into by the House of Representatives. That committee, by a voice vote, passed a policy which states “All contracts entered into by the House Management Committee shall be confidential and shall not be released to any person or entity, except as specifically directed by the House Management Committee only when the committee deems necessary for the execution of the contract.”
The Senate Rules Committee is expected to follow suit when it meets Wednesday, provided committee chair Terry Burton does not collide with a phantom deer en route to the meeting, as has happened in the past.
If there is one thing our Legislature does well — and, in fact, there may be only one thing it does well — it’s making rules that don’t apply to themselves.
It’s clear our state bosses believe regular people are simply too stupid to be trusted with the details.
So, at some point before the 2017 legislative session begins in January, these two committees will have recommendations to address our state budget and school-funding problems. The committees will tell the bosses what they want to hear and only what they want to hear and then those recommendations will be shoved through the Legislature. The taxpayers ought to just shut up and take it.
The funny part is that we likely will do just that.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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