JACKSON - In legislative parlance, you could say Amy "tuck" everybody at the Capitol by surprise.
The Amy in question, of course, is Republican Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, who stunned state lawmakers two days after the 2006 session convened by advocating an increase in the cigarette tax to $1 per pack and a phased-out elimination of the state's inequitable 7-cent sales tax on groceries by 2014.
Then, the very next day, the Senate, over which Tuck presides and where the "T" word couldn't be uttered the past three years, passed the tax hike/cut bill by a veto-proof margin.
It's important to mention the bill's veto-proof passage because Gov. Haley Barbour, the Republican guy in the center office with the veto pen, has vowed to use it if there's even a scent of new taxes in any bill put before him.
Tuck, who had kept her tax package completely under wraps until springing it on the Senate, maintained that the measure was "revenue-neutral," meaning that the loss of revenue from the grocery tax would be fully offset by the cig tax. That's doubtful, say some legislators because the grocery tax is part of the state's 7 percent general sales tax from which municipalities get a share under a complex formula.
For several years health advocates, backed by a statewide poll favoring increasing the state's 18-cent cigarette tax - the second lowest in the nation - had been rebuffed when they proposed a $1 hike in the levy.
Ironically, the House last year passed a 50-cent increase in the tobacco tax to prevent more than 50,000 needy recipients from being dropped from Medicaid, but Tuck saw to it that the bill stayed in a Senate pigeon-hole.
Cutting the onerous 7-cent state sales tax on groceries has long been advocated by this column because it is a tax burden borne inequitably by the poorest of the poor in a state with the lowest per capita income.
But until Dick Molpus ran for governor in 1995 and made a reduction of the tax to 4 percent the chief plank in his platform, the idea had never gained any statewide traction. (And you remember what happened to him.)
The House earlier that same year came within three votes (it takes a three-fifths majority) of passing a grocery tax cut, with Republicans lining up to oppose the measure.
Significantly, many states have no sales tax or a reduced rate on groceries. Mississippi now has the highest state levy on groceries, but several states are higher when you add in local sales taxes.
Since the arrival of Barbour, the most partisan governor to ever occupy the office, Mississippi's Legislature has been sharply divided along party lines for the first time in legislative history.
As the state slowly emerged from the 2001 economic recession, partisanship dangerously threw lawmakers into gridlock over providing revenue to protect key services from deep cuts. Even then, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the life blood of public schools, remains underfunded, and higher education is desperately trying to compensate for three years of cuts.
Until her tax gambit, Tuck had marched lockstep with Barbour's anti-tax mantra as well as his other ideas, and pushed the Senate, despite its slight Democratic majority, to hand Barbour absolute control of Mississippi's upper chamber.
This left the House, made up two-thirds of Democrats and staunchly allied behind battle-tested Speaker Billy McCoy, to become the bulwark against Barbour's domination of the legislative process.
Now with a whiff of discord between the two top administration leaders over taxes, the implications of Tuck's move may bring a welcomed softening of the partisan dynamic that has divided the two houses.
Several times the House has sent tax measures, including a 50-cent tobacco tax hike, to the Senate to prevent damaging budget cuts in education and social programs only to see the revenue measures die in the upper chamber.
Naturally, the immediate reaction around the Capitol after Tuck made her dramatic turnaround on taxes was to ask the question: What is she up to? What's she running for now that she's term-limited in her present job?
Governor is out of the question since Barbour can run for another term, and no one in his right mind would suggest she would try to oust him as the GOP nominee.
But Tuck is a total political animal, and you can bet when the candidate list is made up in 2006, she'll be on it somewhere.
