NATCHEZ — Transportation, spending and charter schools were issues from the recent legislative session that local legislators said would have a continued impact on the area.

Sen. Kelvin Butler (D-Magnolia), Sen. Melanie Sojourner (R-Natchez), Rep. Sam Mims (R-McComb) and Rep. Robert Johnson (D-Natchez) all spoke at the Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce’s legislative breakfast Monday, a yearly post-session event.

Transportation

Both the state house and senate passed a construction bond bill, but neither bill made final passage because the leadership of the two chambers could not come to an agreement, Butler said.

The problem with the failure to pass a bonding bill, Sojourner said, was that it included bonds for rural roads and bridges.

Mims said he was opposed to bonding because it was borrowing money. Instead, he said he would like to see the legislature return to appropriating money.

Johnson said the bridge program was supposed to be funded by appropriations, but because of the condition of many bridges and roads in Mississippi, that isn’t possible.

“There is a discussion about sending it back to the counties, to the supervisors and letting them assess it (with a tax), and we tried that unsuccessfully for years — the counties don’t have the money,” Johnson said.

While a few counties have high enough revenue to support that kind of spending, Johnson said many do not.

“As Adams County goes, as Jefferson County goes and as Claiborne County goes, so the state goes,” he said.

However, Johnson said recent developments involving the Tuscaloosa shale in southwest Mississippi make him believe that the governor will soon be compelled to call a special session to pass an economic development package that will include road improvements.

The potential for 5,000 to 6,000 jobs in southwest Mississippi could sway the opponents to bonding, Johnson said.

“I look at bridges, highways and all that as the kind of investment that pays you back,” he said.

“We have new oil exploration in Amite and Wilkinson counties, and those areas desperately need new roads for transport. Even though we have had some improvements through the years, we need some vast improvements to get that (industry) in and out.”

Charter schools

All of the legislators expressed some surprise that no charter school legislation was passed in the recently ended session.

Butler said that he was opposed to the charter school legislation because he wanted to see charter-style reforms put in place in the existing public schools before attempting to overhaul the entire system.

“I didn’t think we needed to roll out a whole charter school bill for the whole state,” Butler said.

“Why can’t we tell the department of education we want to do things differently, like the charter schools you are talking about doing?”

Johnson said he believed the changes proposed for the charter system could be placed in the existing educational framework, stating that he blamed the current educational system for being too insular and interested in protecting its own interests and “multi-layered administrators.”

“Charter schools offer flexibility, and the department of education could institute that, but that would get in the way of someone getting a consulting contract,” he said.

“Every county, every school district, needs some flexibility without having to go through the cookie-cutter system we have in this state.”

The charter school initiative, he said, should start the discussion and eventually end in some action.

But Johnson said he had another concern with the charter school initiative, the privatization of education.

“I have problem — as I did with corrections — turning over a multi-billion dollar budget to corporations that are openly traded on Wall Street,” he said. “You may not have a problem doing that with prisoners, but I have a problem doing that with children.

“If you think charter schools are going to be your local organization of parents coming in and running it, economically and locally that is not feasibly.”

Sojourner said she was in favor of the charter system because of her personal philosophy.

“I passionately believe that, as a parent, I should have the choice about where my child is educated,” she said.

This year’s session helped lay the foundation for a future session by adopting a school grading scale that uses the A – F rating rather than the current “success” rating system, Sojourner said.

“You go into a restaurant and slap that sign on the door and it says, ‘This restaurant received this grade,’ you know what it means,” Sojourner said. “You see that a school has been rated ‘successful’ based on the district it is in, you don’t know what that means.”

Mims said he was certain that during the summer, the house and senate leadership would get together and craft a good charter school bill for the next session. He also said school districts that perform well don’t need to feel threatened by charter legislation.

Spending

Johnson said that while the state was looking at a budget shortfall, the legislature was still able to fund what he considered the core issues for the state, Medicaid, K-12 education, adequate education initiatives and community colleges.

Mims said this was the first time in history the Republican party had control of the governor’s office, lieutenant governor’s office, house and senate.

“There was a new environment, and I was very well pleased with how this legislative session went,” Mims said. “One goal of the house leadership is to reduce the amount of one-time monies we spend, and that is going to continue to be our goal.”

Other issues

Butler said he was especially proud to have passed the “Keep Mississippi Beautiful” legislation, which allows people getting or renewing their driver’s licenses to donate to a statewide anti-littering fund.

Sojourner said she was proud to have authored and passed two bills. The first bill removed the blood test and three-day waiting period required to receive a wedding license.

The second Sojourner bill allowed rural courts to have a medical doctor examine a patient for lunacy instead of having to transport them to a specialist who might not be located in the county.

Mims said one of the important pieces of legislation he saw as the chair of the public health committee was the one that created the office of physician workforce to oversee the further development of a medical professional workforce in the state.

“We know that Mississippi has a shortage of physicians, so the goal is to create more doctors — have them graduate in Mississippi and they stay in Mississippi, to have them come back home to Natchez, Liberty and McComb and practice,” he said.