Late on Monday, after a long day of backbiting between the top Republican leaders in the House and Senate, the bill that would fund the Attorney General’s Office budget died after missing the midnight deadline.
The missed deadline will likely mean the bill will need to be considered in a special session, joining the Mississippi Department of Transportation appropriations bill that also died Monday before deadline.
In budget negotiations for the attorney general funding bill, lawmakers slipped in a provision to require the attorney general to deposit any money earned through legal settlements into the treasury within 15 days.
“There was some issue at the attorney general’s (fall 2016) budget hearing,” said Sen. Buck Clarke, R-Hollandale and Senate Appropriations chairman, when asked why the provision was added. “He mentioned he had a $21 million at the time, and it showed up in a different amount two months later… He made the representation he had (a different amount).”
Clarke said during Senate debate that the provision was inserted by the House. After some debate, the Senate then voted to approve the bill with the provision included.
During House debate, Rep. David Baria, D-Bay St. Louis, objected to that provision through a point of order. Baria’s point of order questioned the legality of inserting general bill language into an appropriations bill.
After a long break, Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, ruled in Baria’s favor, touching off a Roberts Rules of Order judo match between the Gunn-led House and Reeves’ Senate.
Just before 9 p.m., in an unprecedented move, the House voted to amend the conference report and remove the objectionable provision by passing a concurrent resolution. Baria withdrew his point of order, putting the ball in the Senate’s court.
Questions of legality of the House’s concurrent resolution were considered by Senate leaders since Senate rules do not include capability to consider such a resolution, several Senate officials said late Monday night.
The attorney general funding bill officially died at midnight, which was the deadline to pass conference reports for appropriations bills.
Both Reeves and Gunn declined to comment to reporters at that time.
“I want to thank the Senate for your hard work today,” Reeves said at midnight shortly before gaveling out. “We passed every conference report, including the conference report for MDOT, the conference report for State Aid Roads and Bridges and the conference report for the AG.”
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.
Now this is a real show of stewardship, action surely to have the members of the legislature proving to be fiscally conservative and capable of taking action. Now a special session. Wow, extra money for those legislators, extra cost to the taxpayers.