Lawmakers Return to Capital to Work on Budget Wednesday

Mississippi legislators took a month-long break to gather information on the federal stimulus package, and work on a budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st. MPB’s Stephen Koranda reports on where the budget stands, as lawmakers prepare to return to the capital tomorrow.

An announcement last week threw a wrench into some lawmakers’ budget plans. In April tax collections fell around 90 million dollars below estimate. Lawmakers will have to tackle the current year deficit before working on the next budget. Senator Alan Nunnelee of Tupelo chairs the Senate Appropriations committee.

“My goal is to make sure that we don’t have any additional cuts, I don’t see us being able to restore any of the 200 million that’s already been cut, but if we can achieve that goal, we’ll have been successful.”

Education and Medicaid, two of the largest budget items, weren’t cut as much as other programs. Representative Cecil Brown of Jackson is also working on the budget. He says with less than two months left in the fiscal year, there may be no way to cut enough to cover around 100 million dollars.

“There might be 700 or 800 million dollars left to spend. If you cut 100 million dollars out of that, and it all came out of education and all came out of Medicaid, you just can’t do it. There’s just not enough money.”

Brown says this leaves lawmakers looking for other options.

“We’re going to have to come up with some more money, and I don’t mean tax money. We’re not going to raise any more taxes. There’s some pots of money out there that we may have to dip into. The rainy day fund, we may have to move some of the of the money that we anticipated using in 2010 to 2009.”

Brown believes lawmakers will try to tackle the budget problems facing the state this week, in an attempt to keep lawmakers' stay at the capital as short as possible.