A gubernatorial commission suggesting that voters get a chance to dump the Mississippi flag and the Nissan Motor Co.'s announcement of a $930 million truck plant near Canton topped the news in 2000.
Gov. Ronnie Musgrove's historic election by the Mississippi House of Representatives shortly after the new year and the Legislature's enactment of a multi-year, multi-million dollar teacher pay raise also dominated the headlines.
Meanwhile, lawmakers faced with growing voter ire repealed a costly - and controversial - retirement benefit package in a special session, erasing action taken during the regular session that ended in May.
The state's top news stories are annually selected by the Mississippi staff of The Associated Press and its member news organizations.
On the heels of an economic boycott in South Carolina over that state's flying of the Confederate battle flag, Musgrove created a commission of business and political leaders led by former Gov. William Winter to recommend a new flag design for Mississippi or retain the existing one.
The Mississippi Supreme Court had ruled in May that the state banner, with its Confederate battle flag symbol in one corner, had no legal standing.
After a series of contentious public hearings, the commission asked the Legislature to order an election for voters to choose between the present flag and a commission proposal.
The Legislature was expected to schedule a vote for sometime next year.
Also in the wings is an initiative effort to place the present flag design in the Mississippi Constitution.
After weeks of speculation and with much fanfare, Nissan formally announced in November that it would build trucks, minivans and sports utility vehicles at a new plant in Madison County.
There was no drama in the announcement. Alabama officials complained a month earlier that Mississippi had out bid them for the 4,000 jobs. The Legislature met in special session to approve a $295 million incentive package, spurring land acquisition efforts that were in full swing as the year came to a close.
Other top stories in the state:
3. Mississippi's closest gubernatorial election in the past century came to an end in January with House members voting 86-36 for Musgrove over Republican rival Mike Parker.
The 1999 race between the two was a dead heat. Musgrove led Parker by a whisker in the popular vote. The two evenly split electoral votes, based on 122 Mississippi House districts.
House Speaker Tim Ford predicted before the vote that Musgrove would win. Both campaigns heavily lobbied lawmakers for their votes.
4. Pressure to raise the salaries of Mississippi's 30,000-plus school teachers proved the old adage that nothing's really dead in the Legislature.
After legislative leaders denounced as too expansion - and expensive - a Musgrove multi-year plan raise school teachers' pay to the Southeastern average, momentum built for one proposed by Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck that tied increases to growth in Mississippi revenues.
Mississippi now pays teachers less than any other state in the region, and little will change over the next two years. Teachers would get nothing extra in the upcoming school year and a 2 percent increase the year after that. Large raises would begin in the 2002-2003 school year, if the state has a 5 percent revenue growth each year.
5. With little discussion, lawmakers pushed through a retirement bill in May that sweetened their personal pension program.
Lawmakers later rescinded the benefits they had approved for themselves in a summer special session the governor called on the one subject.
Supporters said lawmakers had had just one pay raise in nearly 25 years. They said nothing was improper about the pension change, but lawmakers had to respond to a public outcry.
6. With its huge hull and massive propellers exposed to the Mississippi sun, the USS Cole returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in December, settling in for repairs at Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula.
Ingalls will begin the work in January.
Seventeen sailors died aboard the Cole when it was attacked by suicide bombers as it refueled Oct. 12 during a stop in Aden, Yemen. The blast ripped a 40-foot hole in the destroyer's side, which officials say can be repaired in a year for about $250 million.
The guided missile destroyer was christened at Ingalls in 1995.
7. Mississippi's hot, dry summer turned into a hot, dry fall bringing devastation to thousands of acres from wildfires.
Bans on outside burning continued well in November in most areas of Mississippi. November rains eased drought conditions around the state.
Firefighters for the four months battled thousands of acres of wildfires throughout Mississippi.
Statewide, there were 3,167 fires reported between June 1 and Oct. 31, consuming 40,611 acres.
8. As state government financial problems became more acute, the governor stepped in to order $50 million in spending cuts, exempting areas of education and law enforcement. The big crunch came late in the year when legislative leaders and Musgrove unveiled separate budget proposals that generally were $50 million to $65 million less than appropriations bills passed in the 2000 session.
Tax collections have run behind expectations for at least 18 months.
9. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and others claimed a black teen-ager's apparent suicide was a lynching.
Seventeen-year-old Raynard Johnson who was found hanging from a pecan tree in his front yard.
Jackson claimed authorities moved too quickly to rule the death a suicide.
Two autopsies, including one commissioned by the family, found no evidence of a struggle, and investigators have said their findings also indicated Johnson killed himself. Authorities have said Johnson's girlfriend broke up with him shortly before he was found dead on June 16.
A federal investigation continued late in the year.
10. Investigations of civil rights-era murders continued, including the arrest of Ernest H. Avants of Bogue Chitto, who was indicted by a federal grand jury in the June 10, 1966, murder of Ben Chester White.
Government attorneys say the killing of 67-year-old White was, in part, a plot that may have been designed to bring Martin Luther King Jr. to Mississippi so he could be killed. Avants was acquitted in a Mississippi court in 1967.
Federal prosecutors, who claimed jurisdiction after learning that the slaying took place in the Homochitto National Forest, said the jury in that trial was never informed that Avants had confessed.
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