Mississippi lawmakers adjourned a 124-day regular legislative session in May, rewriting a quarter-century old school funding formula and declining to expand Medicaid coverage despite intensive negotiations over several months. Lawmakers also began to address a potential shortfall in the state’s retirement system.
This session, which began Jan. 2, 2024, took nearly every day of the initially allotted 125 days, and in fact was extended on paper until May 14. Lawmakers could have returned on that date to consider any gubernatorial vetoes.
The session began with Gov. Tate Reeves’s inauguration to a second term and then his announcement (and lawmakers’ approval of) incentive packages to lure two major industrial recruits: a $2 billion truck-battery manufacturer to Marshall County near Memphis; and a major $10 billion Amazon datacenter in Madison County, just north of Jackson.
Newly elected House Speaker Jason White combined his Republican majority and Democratic support to rewrite a 25-year-old school funding formula – once a volatile hot-button issue. White also pushed for full Medicaid expansion. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who entered his second four-year term as presiding officer of the state Senate, coalesced his diverse chamber on both issues – Medicaid and school funding – adding an objective funding calculation to the education bill that passed and insisting on the work requirement on Medicaid bill, that didn’t pass. – Cooperative Energy
