“Hire Mississippi” — a mandate for utility companies to select more Mississippi contractors for projects in the state — received initial approval Thursday from the Public Service Commission.
Brandon Presley, chairman of the commission and chief proponent of the mandate, said utility companies hire too many out-of-state contractors for their Mississippi projects.
“It makes me sick to drive by utility projects that are being paid for solely by Mississippi customers and to see out-of-state tags that are getting that money,” Presley said.
The mandate will require electricity, gas, water and telephone service providers to report annually to the commission a list of Mississippi contractors who have contacted about participation in any projects above $200,000 that the company undertakes. This list would be updated quarterly.
Utility companies awarded any project above $200,000 must mail notices of that project to Mississippi contractors on their Hire Mississippi list.
Utility companies must also seek Mississippi contractors and vendors to join their project notification lists via advertisements in newspapers, the commission’s website and the utilities’ websites.
Whenever a company chooses an out-of-state contractor for one of its contracts, it will have to explain to the commission why it chose an out-of-state contractor over a Mississippi contractor.
Presley this is the first rule of its kind created by any public service commission in the country.
After a period of public notice and comments, the mandate will be introduced for final approval by the PSC this fall. Utilities would need to submit their list of contractors to the commission in July 2018, Presley said.
The mandates states that the commission may reimburse “all prudently incurred incremental costs associated with compliance with this rule.”
Presley said those costs would be minuscule and would include things such as stamps and envelopes.
As with all PSC mandates, penalty for non-compliance goes up to $5,000 per day per incident, Presley said.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
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.
As I understand the proposal, utilities are only required to seek MS companies and report to the PSC. There is no actual requirement to hire MS companies. Therefore, if my understanding is correct, your headline is erroneous, since there is no “mandate” to hire MS companies.
The main question is why we allow Mississippi dollars to leave the state? Why hire out-of-state contractors over local? Both questions have to be answered. Are there kickbacks given to utilities to hire other than in-state labor?