
For the sixth time since he took office in 2012, Gov. Phil Bryant will deliver his annual State of the State address Tuesday night.
Capitol staff and runners were busy staging the House chamber for the speech, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. during a rare joint legislative session. House members, Senate members and Supreme Court justices will be present. The speech will be broadcast live on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and streamed on the Legislature’s website.
The speech is expected to feature some of Bryant’s recent talking points: improving the state’s public education through various reform efforts including a reform of the funding formula, working with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration to improve infrastructure in the state, touting recent successes in attracting corporations to the state, and focusing on job growth and a decrease in overall unemployment.
Bryant serves as national chairman for National Education Commission of the States, the group that designated Mississippi as the most innovative state for public education in 2016. Bryant, who has long focused his office’s policy on education, is expected to tout recent achievements in the state, including improving passing rates for the third grade reading test and charter school development.
In November, the governor released his $5.7 billion budget recommendation for next fiscal year. Bryant stated that he wants to spend more money on a new public education formula but less money on nearly every other facet of state government.
Under Bryant’s budget proposal, most state agencies would receive 1.8 percent less than this fiscal year. The governor said he wants to pursue privatization in government, including the consolidation of some agencies or departments (though he did not mention specific agencies).
The budget proposal feeds into his long-standing effort to decrease spending and the influence of government on the lives of average Mississippians.
“Ultimately, a budget reflects priorities, and this budget represents how I believe government can use taxpayer resources to help move Mississippi forward,” Bryant said in the report.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.