Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, as chairman of the Mississippi Senate, last week began an effort to buy a big stick which he can use for either of at least two political ends.
Unannounced and unheralded, Reeves authored a Senate bill to “generate” $1 billion for Mississippi highways; it passed the Senate within hours, even with senators on both sides of the aisle complaining about lack of time to get information about the bill.
The bill has certain problems, starting with much of the money coming from bonds, a fundraising process Reeves has roundly opposed for years.
Moreover, the bonds would pay for a lot of road maintenance; any student of good government knows you don’t create long-term bonded indebtedness to fix potholes.
His bill was authored on a precept there would be some $600,000 in surplus money in the state budget, but it was authored by a man who has consistently claimed there is no surplus money, not for mental health programs, not for education, not for any number of crying needs of the Magnolia State.
The bill includes certain specific projects, but there appears to be no particular sense to the specific projects unless one considers the possibility each project can be used to woo a certain number of legislative votes.
The projects certainly didn’t come from any known plan for highway construction, not like the long range plans of AHEAD, the 1980s program responsible for so much of the highway development in the last 30 years.
The certainty is all the more clear because all indications were Reeves did not consult anyone at the Mississippi Department of Transportation: no commissioners, no directors, nobody. The announcement last week apparently caught transportation officials flat footed.
Still, if Reeves can get the bill passed, or even if he can’t, he can use it as a political stick with which he can pound home an image of himself as the champion of highway construction, something that just might help get him elected governor.
He was recently quoted as indicating the public had become concerned enough about highway maintenance and growth it had to be addressed. More likely it hit a point he saw political hay ready to be made.
With that end of the stick in hand, Reeves would be able to pound out legislative majorities for his platforms by granting or denying right-of-way for any legislators’ pet highway projects.
It could also be the first salvo in a battle to eliminate an elected state highway commission.
News reports indicated House Speaker Philip Gunn was also caught off guard by Reeves’ highway plan, but he shouldn’t have been; it’s apparently the Republican thing to do now the GOP has majorities in both houses. In a January meeting a lobbyist told his audience Republicans were regularly rushing bills through committees to floor votes without consulting anyone with interests, concerns or actual experience in the affected fields. It wasn’t, he offered, like the old days when legislators took time to listen before pursuing legislation.
— Waid Praither, The Carthaginian
