Thursday, February 13 was the deadline for initial floor action by the full House (or the full Senate, as the case may be) on these bills. Friday was the deadline for any reconsideration of those bills. Revenue (non-general) bills are subject to deadlines falling later in the session.  Click the following link for a listing of all legislative deadlines applicable to the 2003 regular session.

--HB 1216 to regulate telephone solicitation calls in Mississippi passed the Public Utilities Committee and then the full House. This bill would move regulation of telemarketers from the Attorney General's office to the Public Service Commission. Citizens would be able notify the PSC that they want to be included on a "no calls" list, meaning they do not wish to receive solicitations. The bill does contain important exemptions, however, so not all callers nor all calls will be subject to the new law. Any company not meeting the statutory exemptions which wants to make telephone solicitations would have to purchase a "no calls" list from the PSC and would then be allowed to call individuals not on the list. The use of automated dialing systems and caller ID blocking systems are also restricted. Firms violating the proposed law could be fined up to $5,000 for each violation. A companion bill, HB 295, would restrict the times of the day solicitors may call consumers.

--The House Insurance Committee and the full House passed its own version of SB 2628 to create a plan to provide medical malpractice insurance coverage to community hospitals and other health-care facilities, physicians and other personnel licensed to practice. This measure is in response to the crisis related to access to medical malpractice coverage that has been ongoing in the state for more than a year. Under the House committee's plan, the limits of the coverage would be $500,000 per single occurrence, and $2 million per year, for all participants that are political subdivisions of the state (i.e. public facilities such as county-owned hospitals). Other participants would have coverage limits of $1 million per occurrence, and $3 million per year. All plan participants would be required to provide services to Medicaid recipients, state employees and Children's Health Insurance (CHIP) participants.

--HB 773 would roll back some pay raises for top executives at the State Department of Education. The bill was amended to say the raises could be the greater of $600 or the amount of realignment approved by the State Personnel Board. Also, the Personnel Board would have to give final approval of the salary for the state education superintendent, the head of the two-year college system, and the higher education commissioner. Most legislators learned this week for the first time that some top-level raises approved by the Department of Education in late January exceeded $20,000 per person, a fact that astonished and angered many lawmakers fresh from cobbling together a huge educational appropriations bill, accomplished only through imposing very austere funding formulas upon the rest of state government. Needless to say, granting a relative handful of DOE administrators raises of up to $20,000 per person while cutting many non-educational state agencies to the bone was not what the Legislature had in mind when it made educational funding its "priority" for FY 2004, a point now hopefully better understood by those who run the DOE.

--HB 859 would direct the State Department of Education to study the cost-benefits of mandatory kindergarten, pre-kindergarten and optional diplomas. A recent study on Mississippi's high dropout rate suggested that early childhood education may be an important key to lowering the dropout rate. Some 40 percent of all students entering the 7th grade eventually drop out. Regardless of the results of any DOE study, however, it seems readily apparent that Mississippi does not now have the funding necessary to institute mandatory kindergarten and pre-kindergarten, and it is doubtful whether such funding will be available in the foreseeable future.

Finally, as most informed observers had expected, Speaker Tim Ford (D–Baldwyn) properly ruled Wednesday that the point of order raised last week by Rep. George Flaggs, Jr. (D–Vicksburg) on HB 1146 was well taken, and that the "Help America Vote" bill as brought to the floor by the Apportionment and Elections Committee indeed contained several technical flaws and therefore was improperly before the House. Speaker Ford made it clear to the membership that the bill was killed because Rep. Flaggs’ point of order exposed fatal defects in the original bill itself, and that the Speaker’s ruling had nothing to do with the Voter I.D. floor amendment offered to the bill by senior GOP leader Rep. Bill Denny (R–Jackson).  Click here to see a copy of the Denny amendment to HB 1146.

The Apportionment and Elections Committee evidently dropped the ball by inexplicably reporting out a procedurally defective bill, unnecessarily imperiling some $34 million in Federal funds that Mississippi expects to receive for implementation of Congressionally-mandated election procedure reforms. Fortunately, timely Senate action seems to have retrieved the situation, for SB 2821 (the Senate counterpart to HB 1146) passed the Senate late in the week and is now headed to the House. SB 2821 will be referred to the House Apportionment and Elections Committee, which now will have the opportunity to redeem itself for the technical errors that killed HB 1146. Significantly, SB 2821, as amended on the Senate floor, includes meaningful Voter I.D. provisions very similar to those that Rep. Denny had offered in the House. Republicans have long endorsed appropriate Voter I.D. as a necessary deterrent to election fraud, while Democrats generally oppose Voter I.D. as a potential intimidation to minority voters.

Representative Greg Snowden (R-Meridian) maintains a legislative web site to aid constituents and other interested persons in obtaining information about state government. The web site address is www.gregsnowden.com. Rep. Snowden may be reached by e-mail at any time at greg@gregsnowden.com, or by telephone at 601-693-5700 (Meridian office) or 601-527-5350 (cell phone - a local call from anywhere within Mississippi).

EDITORIAL NOTE: Most of the facts and much of the organization of the above summary is due to the fine work of Mac Gordon, of the House Information Office. However, although Mr. Gordon provides this information weekly to all House members, each member has the privilege of using it however he or she sees fit. Rep. Snowden has taken the liberty to re-write much of the standard summary, and to include his own comments and expressions of opinion. Accordingly, while Rep. Snowden gratefully acknowledges the work of the House Information Office in organizing and supplying reliable and timely information as to the workings of the House, all comment and all opinion contained in this summary is that of Rep. Snowden alone, and not that of Mr. Gordon or any other staff employee of the House of Representatives.