For those keeping score, the knock-down, drag-out battle between the powers that be at the state Capitol during the 2010 regular session of the Legislature won’t be about Medicaid funding as it was in 2009 — at least not directly.
During the 2010 legislative session, the battle will be about special funds raids. Two of the more enticing special fund targets will, of course, be the Working Cash Stabilization Fund — commonly called the “rainy day” fund — and the Health Care Trust Fund.
It has long been understood at the Legislature that lawmakers didn’t have to let a little thing like not having any money get in the way of governing. Short of money? Well, then let’s raid the special funds, let’s make some deficit appropriations or let’s spend next year’s money this year.
In the days before the current worldwide recession, those tactics might have been distasteful, but legislators could normally wrangle a workable budget out of those strategies and get by with it.
Not this year. Not by a long shot. Won’t work. Won’t begin to work.
Why? The state’s revenue shortfall is too large. Just four months into the current fiscal year that began July 1, the state is headed for a revenue shortfall that could grow as deep as $450 million to $500 million or more.
During his 2009 “State of the State” address in January, Barbour prefaced his somber budget remarks with an expression of thanks to lawmakers for filling the state’s $368 million “rainy day” fund to the statutory limit and for prudence in holding the line in increases in the state’s bonded indebtedness.
But the rest of the 2009 session was spent sparring over Medicaid funding and key House members repeatedly questioned the existence of a “rainy day fund” not being utilized sufficiently in a time of declining revenue.
As the current fiscal year unfolds and the 2010 legislative session approaches, there are several factors that point to an almost certain legislative battle over the use of the “rainy day fund” and the Health Care Trust Fund (the money from the state’s tobacco lawsuit that lawmakers pledged would remain “inviolate” and then proceeded to violate repeatedly).
With revenue shortfalls this massive and significant across-the-board budget cuts this certain, the inevitability of legislators feeding their political addition to non-recurring, one-time funds is as obvious as a little boy with a skinned knee running home to Momma after he gets hurt playing.
For Gov. Haley Barbour and those who consider themselves fiscal conservatives, raiding the special funds is that last thing they want to see done as a hedge against the declining state revenues. Why? Because they argue — and with substantial forecasts from economists to back them up — that 2011 will be even worse.
For those seeking to keep budget cuts from hurting public education and public health care, the need to raid the special funds will be just as obvious to them.
Mississippi taxpayers need to realize that the Legislature and Gov. Barbour are facing the most difficult legislative session since the Great Depression when one considers the tasks in economic terms alone.
But at the end of the day, the big battle in 2010 will decidedly be over how state government handles the special fund question. Bet on it.
Contact Perspective Editor Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at clarionledger.com. His talk radio show, On Deadline with Sid Salter, is broadcast on the SuperTalk Mississippi network.
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During 2010 session, special fund raids are the battle
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