JACKSON - Moving quickly from the Senate chamber to her Capitol office, dressed in one of her trademark suits, Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck appears fully recovered from the lingering illness that sidelined her for several months last year.
Tuck, in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, said her goals for the 2005 session include a restructuring of Medicaid to cut costs and a proposal to streamline some government agencies to close the chasm between state spending and revenue.
"I don't believe that there's a sentiment in the Senate for a tax increase. What I do believe we need to be doing first of all is looking at ways to restructure state government. The immediate answer to the problems that we face in our budget should not be raise taxes," said Tuck, 42, a Republican.
Several lawmakers have said a cigarette tax is one way to raise revenue for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
While some say money generated from the tax could help fund Medicaid and public education's $381 million budget, others contend it's only a fraction of what the state needs to cover all agency spending. Agencies have requested nearly $1 billion more than the $3.8 billion that will be available.
Tuck is a member of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, which earmarked millions of dollars to cover people in Medicaid's optional poverty level aged and disabled category, or PLAD. The group of some 50,000 was set to be cut from the program this past fall, but a court order kept them on the roll until the end of January.
Medicaid Executive Director Dr. Warren Jones says the agency is $268 million over budget this year.
"Even with the additional revenue, we're going to need to restructure Medicaid," said Senate President Pro Tempore Travis Little, R-Corinth.
Little presided over the Senate last spring after Tuck fell ill with mycoplasma pneumonia. She was hospitalized twice. The second hospital stay came after Tuck returned to work at the Capitol in May and became exhausted.
She missed a special session in May and June when lawmakers set limits on lawsuits, but was back at the Capitol for a November special session on bond bills.
Tuck said Wednesday that "it's my nature to work hard," but she said the bout with pneumonia gave her a renewed appreciation for maintaining her health.
Sen. Johnnie Walls, D-Greenville, said Tuck's presence gives the Senate clear direction.
"She will be able to maintain whatever her agenda is and we will know what that is," Walls said. "I think that's a good thing."
Tuck said she favors Gov. Haley Barbour's proposal to remove some agencies from state Personnel Board supervision so they can streamline their budgets.
In 2004, the Senate approved a similar plan, but it hit a roadblock in the House. Only the Mississippi Department of Corrections was given approval to remove some employees from Personnel Board protection. Barbour said the result was that MDOC's spending fell from $290 million in the fiscal year that ended last June 30 to $275 million in the current budget year.
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