STARKVILLE — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is using Pearl Harbor Day to launch one final Mississippi public policy road show in the first of a series of three speeches over the next week in his final full month of an eight-year tenure as governor.
The overall focus of Barbour’s final series of major speeches in the state as governor will focus on economic growth and development, education and public health outcomes, Barbour said during an interview earlier this week.
In Tupelo today, Barbour said he’ll talk about values and how he believes a recommitment to parental responsibility and faith-based community initiatives can solve some of the state ills both in terms of education and social ills.
“We need to get our churches involved in our schools in an affirmative and organized way,” said Barbour. “Churches are, in so many Mississippi communities, the most powerful institution in those communities, and that’s particularly true in the state’s less affluent communities. The state’s churches can and should take a significant role in trying to help children who are not getting help at home, to reinforce the need to stay in school, and to promote the value of education as a means to a good career and an escape from generational poverty.”
Although that speech is likely to generate controversy, it’s also likely that Barbour will find at least some agreement with that position from groups not normally affiliated with fiscal and social conservatives. With the state’s education community already bracing for yet another round of likely budget cuts, Barbour’s call for the intervention of churches will also likely draw fire from those who see stable funding as a more critical education need.
“Improving public education and the delivery of it in this state is about more than money,” said Barbour.
On Thursday, Barbour is slated to speak in Jackson at a workforce training event in which education will be the overarching theme of his remarks.
Next week, on the Gulf Coast, Barbour is slated to make a major speech on pension reform, government spending and the long-term need for the state to control spending while at the same time looking at the state’s revenue stream. One stance that Barbour is taking that may shock some of his supporters is his stance that the time has come for the federal government to remove the moratorium on states collecting the same sales tax on Internet sales of products that are already subject to sales taxes in stores on Mississippi’s Main Streets.
“This isn’t a new tax at all, it’s a tax that’s already owed,” said Barbour. “The theory was, when Internet businesses were in their infancy, to put in a federal moratorium on taxing sales while this new method of business got established. Now it’s established and thriving. The current moratorium is unfair to Main Street, mom-and-pop merchants because it puts them at a 7 percent disadvantage to Internet sellers.
“I see it as a states’ rights issue as well. The states enacted sales taxes and the federal government should get out of the way of the state and local governments and let them collect the taxes from all sellers, not just some of them.”
Finally, Barbour says his speeches will preach one consistent sermon to citizens and the state government he’s leaving as well: Mississippi has to control spending and will have to control it for a number of years while the national and state economy recovers.
“I’m going to talk about what we’ve accomplished over the last eight years and the progress we made on many important fronts like raising the state’s per capita income by 30 percent,” said Barbour. “But there’s a lot of work left to be done, and I’m going to try to speak to those significant issues in these speeches.”
• Sid Salter is journalist-in-residence at Mississippi State University. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
