State business leaders made clear on Wednesday that they are willing to help legislators secure more funding for roads and bridges in the 2017 legislative session.
The Mississippi Economic Council held a press conference in the wake of the death of the internet sales tax bill on Monday. Speaker of the House Philip Gunn had suggested that revenue from that proposed tax be put toward road and bridge infrastructure needs.
But the bill was never taken up in committee on the Senate side, and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves announced Monday he was letting the bill die. Reeves said the bill was unconstitutional, citing a 1992 Supreme Court decision stating that only sales from companies with a physical presence in the state can be subject to state sales or use taxes.
A bond bill passed by the House of Representatives adding $50 million to cities and counties for infrastructure improvements is still alive, and many of those backing highway improvements are hopeful the Senate will add more money to the bill.
Gunn said on Wednesday he was “disappointed” the internet sales tax bill, House Bill 480, did not survive. He noted it would have brought between $100 million to $150 million of continuous revenue to transportation each year.
Gunn did say, however, he was confident the $50 million bond bill for cities and counties would move forward.
Mississippi Economic Council Interim President Scott Waller displayed responses from 4,800 Mississippians gathered in recent days urging lawmakers to develop a plan to fix the state’s roads and bridges.
“The responses show how important safe and reliable transportation is for our state, both from a safety and an economic standpoint,” Waller said.
The Mississippi Economic Council released a study in 2015 showing an investment of $375 million annually is needed to address the most vital road and bridge issues in the state. The study, called Excelerate Mississippi, was conducted by the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi State University.
Mississippi Municipal League President Jimmy Clyde was one of several to speak in support of MEC’s mission to improve the state’s roads and bridges.
“Cities, towns and villages are responsible for more than 23,000 miles of streets. Over 50 percent of Mississippi citizens who live in municipalites expect and deserve safe, well-maintained streets,” Clyde said. The cost of keeping up those streets, however, “continues to outpace current municipal revenue stream,” he said.
Waller emphasized that he is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure more funding this fiscal year.
“If there are any options that remain, we want to make sure we’re exploring those while at the same time continuing to look to the future,” he said.
“If we continue to wait and do nothing, it’s only going to get worse.”
In a press release, MEC noted that 2,300 state and local bridges already are restricted from carrying the legal weight limit for which they were designed.
The MEC estimates that the average Mississippi driver would save $530 in vehicle damage such as tire alignments, cracked windshields and flat tires if roads were properly maintained.
Repairing the state’s highway infrastructure would lead to the creation of 7,000 additional jobs, according to the MEC 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.