NATCHEZ — Local legislators say the last week of the three-month legislative session is vital to wrap up key pieces of legislation that could benefit southwest Mississippi.

For Sen. Melanie Sojourner (R-Natchez) that includes two bills in particular — dealing with tourism marketing and oil severance taxes. Both are bills Sojourner said she is hopeful will make it through the session even if they’re discussed all the way until the last day.

“Those are two big bills that we’re still working to get through the conference stage, but we’re feeling more optimistic each day that we’ll be able to get something worked out,” Sojourner said. “This next week is really the crunch time for those big bills people are watching and waiting for.

“We still have a lot of work ahead of us in the next couple of days.”

Senate Bill 2907 aims to entice oil companies to further develop the Tuscaloosa marine shale, an oil play in southwest Mississippi, through tax incentives.

The Tuscaloosa shale is an unconventional oil play that has been known about for years but could not be developed because the technology to exploit the shale did not exist until recent years.

The impact the shale play could have on southwest Mississippi, Sojourner said, is becoming more apparent every day.

“If we don’t get this right and be competitive with other states, these companies will just go somewhere else,” Sojourner said. “When I drafted the bill I certainly understood the impact of the Tuscaloosa shale, but the governor has made comments at repeated events that this is the biggest economic opportunity in our state’s history, and that’s just huge.”

Gov. Phil Bryant formed a task force last year to determine what role the state has to play in the development of the shale. Both Sojourner and Rep. Sam Mims (R-McComb) are on the task force.

Mims said the work done on the shale bill hopefully will pay off soon.

“This can have an economic impact that that will benefit all counties and citizens in our area and keep us very active for years to come,” Mims said. “We’ve been working very hard on this, and we hope to have a bill completed in the next couple of days.”

Another bill Sojourner authored, Senate Bill 2565, would establish a state tourism advisory board to help the Mississippi Development Authority develop tourism marketing and advertising strategies. The bill would also create a special fund that would pay any expenses incurred by MDA carrying out those strategies.

“The tourism bill is one we got a lot of work done on (Friday),” Sojourner said. “I think members of the tourism industry and staffers are beginning to comprise to work something out.

“That’s another bill I didn’t quite realize how impactful of a bill it could be.”

Mims, who is the chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, said the issue of Medicaid expansion has been on the top of the agenda for much of this session.

The proposed expansion of Mississippi’s Medicaid program, which pays for health care services for the poor, is a part of the broader national health care reform law that is beginning to go into effect.

Bryant opposes putting more people on Medicaid. About 640,000 of the state’s roughly 3 million residents already are covered by the federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled.

Bryant says Mississippi can’t afford it, though the federal law specifies that from 2014 to 2017 the federal government would pay 100 percent of medical costs for people qualifying under new standards. During the three years after that, the federal share progressively drops to 90 percent. The remaining cost must be covered by participating states.

Mims said Bryant has two options for the expansion at the end of the session.

“The governor can run the division by himself in an executive decision, or he can call us back into a special session to try to reauthorize the program,” Mims said. “I think the governor will try to run it, and we’ll see what happens.”

Apart from his focus on the expansion, Mims also authored a bill aimed at attracting dentists to the area.

House Bill 776 enacts the Mississippi rural dentists scholarship program for the purpose of identifying qualified university and college students from rural areas of the state for enrollment in dental school.

“In Mississippi, there is a shortage of health care providers whether it’s physicians or dentists,” Mims said. “We need to be doing all that we can do to bring more physicians and dentists to Mississippi, and that is a bill I’m very proud of.”

The legislative session is scheduled to end April 7.