Education supporters can rest easy
By By Terry R. Cassreino / assistant managing editor
Feb. 16, 2003
When Mississippi legislators shift their attention this week to the state's $10 billion annual budget, education leaders and many parents can breathe a sigh of relief.
Lawmakers won't fiddle with education money. And they won't hold public school and higher education hostage while funding other agency budgets first.
Education already is funded for the fiscal year that starts July 1. For the first time ever, lawmakers approved education budgets during the opening month of their annual session.
If lawmakers did nothing else by the time they adjourn this year, they still could claim a major achievement by funding education the way they did.
Consider this: Education programs will receive an additional $236 million next year, expanding on the $2.1 billion lawmakers had planned to spend.
Or this: Lawmakers ended their longtime practice of funding education with leftovers at the end of their annual session, after they doled-out money to other state agencies.
Election-year politics?
The House and Senate set a precedent, one they will be forced to follow again next year and the year after or face the wrath of educators and parents.
Some political observers credit the move to election-year politics, a sly act designed to gain the favor of a powerful, influential voting bloc: educators. They say legislators and Gov. Ronnie Musgrove who urged the House and Senate last month to fund education early in the session will exploit the move as much as possible on the campaign trail.
They probably will. Musgrove in particular, a former state senator and a master at exploiting the Legislature to his favor, no doubt will take credit.
Forget that former Gov. Ray Mabus pushed that same education funding issue during his four years in office from 1988 to 1992. Forget that key education leaders in the House and Senate also have done the same year after year.
And forget that the Legislature historically takes years, sometimes decades, to enact meaningful, sensible and significant changes in the way they do business.
Musgrove will point to his State of the State speech and say he was the catalyst for change. Lawmakers will point to themselves and say they did what they thought was necessary to help education. That's fine. They deserve credit.
But the bottom line is this: State House and Senate members can spend as much time as they want during the rest of the 2003 Legislature trying to juggle spending priorities. This time, education is safe.
Budget problems?
Isn't Mississippi struggling with a weak economy? Aren't lawmakers talking about how they will cut state agency budgets?
You'd never know that last week if you followed the state Senate, which voted to give state elected officials including the governor a 10 percent raise starting Jan. 1.
And while that proposal still must clear state House, significant pay raises already are in effect for top education executives in Mississippi. The salary for the higher education commissioner alone went from $160,000 to $205,000 last month. It will jump again to $260,000 in mid-April.
The commissioner will earn more than twice the governor, whose pay under the Senate bill would go from $101,800 to $111,980, and nearly 12 times the state's per capita income, which is $21,750.
Go figure.
