The three-month 2020 Mississippi legislative session opened Tuesday, and both State Sen. Angela Hill and State Rep. Ken Morgan say it will be interesting how everything will go with the newly elected state officials.
Making this session unique is all of the top state offices have new people fulfilling the various roles, Gov. Tate Reeves, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Secretary of State Michael Watson.
Hill, a Republican from Picayune who represents Marion County, said working with Hosemann as secretary of state was great and she is looking forward to working with him as lieutenant governor. The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate.
Hill said there are several issues she is hoping to address during this session, one issue being the child protection agency and false reporting.
Her objective is for something to be done regarding people who intentionally file false reports to CPS. Reporting child abuse is very serious and should not be done to harm someone but to protect, Hill said. She said at least three senators have been reported to CPS, and one of them did not even have children at home.
She is also wanting to address fees paid to guardian ad litems, who are attorneys appointed to represent children in court. Guardian ad litems are definitely needed, Hill said, but in some cases their fees are so high it bankrupts the people who are seeking them for legal reasons. She said she wants something done to stop such large fees being charged in cases.
Hill said she plans to address the biological gender assignment as well. She said a biological male who associates as a female should not be allowed to compete on women’s teams in sports. She said she further wants to initiate cause of alarm to make schools, universities and public institution liable in cases where a biological gender, who associates as the opposite, enters the restroom or locker room of the other gender and causes harm. If the matter is approved, it would make the public institutions liable in case of an assault.
“You hear too many cases throughout of the country of this type of assault happening,” Hill said.
She said she is planning on pursuing stronger penalties for aggravated assaults on pets as well she said.
Hill said she wants to target insurance companies who are treating and/or denying people the proper radiation cancer treatment because of following outdated standards. The standard for radiation treatment for cancer patients was updated in 2017; however, the insurance companies are not following the newer standards, she said.
Electrical power substation trespassing is a critical issue as well, she said. It is becoming more common that people are trespassing on the substation and vandalizing it causing people to lose power, according to Hill. She said she would like to see stiffer penalties for it.
“Thanksgiving morning in Pearl River County, while most were trying to cook turkeys, suffered a power loss when someone vandalized one of the substations to steal the copper,” Hill said.
The current chaos going in the Mississippi Department of Corrections is also an issue she feels needs to be address. One concern she has is the amount of prisoners assigned to a guard.
Hill said she believes there should be more guards so there will be less struggles. There is also a matter of using other facilities that are in better shape and more updated than the state Penitentiary at Parchman, such as Walnut Grove. Walnut Grove is a newer facility that is currently empty.
Hill said she also believes the Department of Corrections needs to take more advantage of the state’s regional facilities.
Next fiscal year she is recommending for some outside law enforcement to come in and help restructure how things are being done in the department.
On the House side, Morgan said going into the session a lot of the focus would be on Medicaid and the Department of Corrections.
The Republican from Morgantown said his major concern is finding funding for the roads and bridges. Morgan said while the lottery might help, it won’t be enough to fix everything that needs to be fixed.
He said he is looking forward to getting to work and doing what he can to bring money down to Marion County.
