STARKVILLE — Lost in the headlines about the ongoing redistricting battle and the debate over the state funding construction of a civil rights museum is the absolute political and fiscal miracle that a $5.5 billion state budget was adopted.
Miracle? Well, yes, it is a miracle after a fashion. Given the general state of the national and state economies, the political pressures of an approaching state general election later this year and the bitter redistricting fight, the budget is somewhat miraculous.
Sure, state law requires the Legislature to pass a balanced budget. Sure, a budget gets adopted every year.
But throughout state government, the gloom-and-doom scenario that had been painted for the fiscal year 2012 state budget by and large wasn’t as bad as forecast.
K-12 public education funding was down less than 1 percent, or $16.6 million, with $5.5 million coming in cuts to the Mississippi Adequate Education Program and some $6 million from the ad valorem tax reduction. That cut will virtually guarantee local tax increases.
The state’s universities and colleges also saw funding cut less than 1 percent, or $6.8 million, while the state’s community college system was actually increased $9.6 million, or more than 4 percent.
Mental health funding overall was up 2.65 percent, or $6.4 million. The state’s prison system was cut less than 1 percent, or $1.9 million.
While limiting the budget cuts to far less than had been feared, the state also passed a substantial bond bill to fund long-term construction and other infrastructure needs.
The controversial bond debt for a state museum of history and a civil rights museum passed Monday after Gov. Haley Barbour applied maximum pressure in the state Senate.
The rest of the budget process, for all the headlines, has been a rather Faulkneresque exercise in political sound and fury. On balance, this has been the most successful budget year for the Democratic House leadership of the Barbour era.
House budget negotiators got more of what they wanted than they’ve gotten in a number of years. But that’s not a difficult circumstance to handicap. In election years, the Mississippi Legislature has traditionally been more likely to spend and to bond toward Democratic numbers than toward Republican numbers.
• Sid Salter is journalist-in-residence at Mississippi State University. Contact him at ssalter@library.msstate.edu.
