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Vicksburg Post, on "Relief: Federal checks provide cover for Legislature.''
Stimulus money will shield Mississippi officials from making hard decisions this year and maybe next year, too. But it would be a major mistake to think legislators have escaped the fiscal corner into which they've painted the state.
Eyebrows have been raised since Republican Gov. Haley Barbour said Mississippi should think about it before accepting even a smidgen of the $787 billion package of grants and tax cuts President Barack Obama signed last week, but he's not alone.
The governors of Texas, Louisiana, Alaska, South Carolina and Idaho, all Republicans, have questioned whether Congress has done the right thing — even if it will tide their states over with education, health care and infrastructure cash.
"My concern is there's going to be commitments attached to it that are a mile long," said Texas Gov. Rick Perry. One such commitment in Mississippi, Barbour's office said, would be to pay benefits to people who don't now qualify under state law.
Mississippi House Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi, has scoffed at Barbour's concerns. The veteran Democrat said Mississippi is in no position to stand on some philosophical principle. To avoid cuts in public education spending and health care programs such as Medicaid, the money must and will be accepted, McCoy said.
The root reality here is that Mississippi has been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years now to keep up with commitments the Legislature has made by passing laws such as the Mississippi Adequate Education Program and myriad Medicaid programs with no — zero — assurance of the state's ability to come up with the cash as the programs grow and grow and grow.
It's not that these are bad programs. Quite the opposite. There's nothing wrong with making commitments to education at all levels. And there's an expectation that government must provide medical services to those who can't afford nursing home, hospital and doctor bills.
It was simply unwise governance — and remains unwise governance — to pass laws that commit the public treasury to provide open-ended amounts of money without an assured, dedicated revenue source.
Some predict that this year's rescue money from Congress will lead to more next year and the year after and in perpetuity as the nation transitions to an even more centralized system. That may well occur.
But it needs to be clear in everyone's mind that stimulus money is not a solution. Even before the national economy tanked and even when Mississippi's income was rising year to year, the Legislature had over-pledged its resources. A couple of checks from Washington does not cure the irresponsibility shown through the years in Jackson.
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Greenwood Commonwealth, on "Don't overcomplicate school ratings.''
It never fails. Just when the public gets a handle on what educators are talking about, they change it up and get everyone confused again.
So it is with the proposal of the Mississippi Department of Education to change the terminology used in rating the public schools.
For the past several years, the schools have been assigned a numerical rating from 1 to 5. Schools that hit Level 5 threw a party, and those that fell to Level 1 were scrutinized. The Department of Education assigned words to describe what each level meant, but in common usage, the public stuck mainly with the numbers.
Now, the Department of Education not only wants to throw out the numbers, but it proposes increasing the possible levels from five to seven. There are still two levels above the "passing" mark, but now twice as many below it.
We're waiting to hear what distinguishes a school that's labeled "academic watch" from "at risk of failing" from "low performing." We're certain there's some type of statistical explanation, but it's probably one that most parents and other non-educators won't be able to follow. Why complicate matters?
Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds was right that Mississippi's standards for success on state-mandated tests had been set too low. But you don't have to make the accreditation labels more complicated in raising the degree of difficulty.
The public could digest Levels 1 to 5. There's no good reason to abandon them.
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The Bolivar Commercial, Cleveland, in "Rocks flying off trucks turn roads into version of Dodge City.''
State senators, who are tired of eating other people's dust as well as rocks, are attempting to strengthen a 35-year-old law requiring truck drivers to cover their loads so their cargo won't end up flying through someone's windshield.
Thank goodness. The bill is much needed.
It's hard to go for long in Mississippi without winding up with a cracked windshield. We remember, for example, being passed by two dump trucks while driving down a 20-mile stretch of highway in Sunflower County. Each truck left a calling card in the form of a rock that cracked our windshield in different places.
The current law makes it sound as though dump trucks and similar vehicles are required to have covered beds. Unfortunately, the dirt and rocks don't have to be covered if a truck maintains 6 inches of freeboard, which is the distance between the top of the material and the top of the truck bed holding it in.
The Senate, however, unanimously passed a bill recently that would require truck drivers to cover their loads.
Senate Highways Committee Chairman Tom King, R-Petal, said the legislation would make driving down Mississippi roads a safer task by helping to eliminate cracked windshields.
King explained that the bill would require trucks and other carriers built with an open top to cover the load with a tarp, canvas or some sort of top on or after July 1. He said vehicles built before that date and equipped with a tarp or a canvas must use those covers.
Even Mike Pepper, executive director of the Mississippi Road Builders Association, says if the bill is good for public safety, the association is in favor of it. He added that most of the association's members are covering their loads already.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation also backs the bill, according to Willie Huff, the department's director of enforcement.
"To me, it's just a common sense solution to a safety problem," Huff told The Associated Press.
The House of Representatives is currently discussing the Senate-passed bill in its transportation committee.
Basically we find only one fault with the legislation, and that is it leaves the fine for violators at $25 to $100. That can't even begin to compare with the cost of replacing a windshield that's been broken because an uncaring driver failed to cover his cargo. The fine should be increased in proportion to the damage done.
Even that, however, won't stop the broken windshield syndrome in Mississippi. We've also had windows broken out by cars speeding down gravel country roads on numerous occasions, and we've nearly been hit by flying pieces of road gravel as cars sped past us while we were walking our dog.
It would be good if the legislature would also pass a bill requiring cars to slow down when they are passing other cars on gravel roads or pedestrians on any road. Such a bill would not only save windshields, it could prevent wrecks and save lives as well.
Going for a drive or walking the dog shouldn't be an experience in the school of hard knocks.
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The Sun Herald, Gulfport/Biloxi, on "Do not allow fees to keep facts hidden.''
Mississippians should not have to pay unrealistically high fees to find out what public officials and agencies are doing.
To prevent that from happening, both House Bill 1048 and Senate Bill 2921 would improve access to public records by restricting what can be charged to fulfill public records requests.
Although the law already limits the fee for copies of public records to "actual costs," that cost is sometimes inflated by public officials who charge exorbitant pay rates for the person doing the copying or who hire expensive outside consultants to fulfill the public records request, according to Barbara Powell, a lobbyist for the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information.
The Legislature can and should prohibit these inflated charges by restricting the labor fee to persons who are employees of the public agency and by requiring that any staff time included in the cost be at the pay scale of the lowest level employee competent to assemble the response to the request.
SB 2921 passed the Senate Judiciary B Committee but was killed on the Senate floor. By approving HB 1048, the senators on the committee can give their colleagues an opportunity to reconsider the matter.
As Powell points out: Ten states limit the cost of producing documents to copying costs alone. And Louisiana specifically forbids the government from charging anything for producing a public record unless the request requires that the custodian of the record make the record available after normal business hours.
Mississippians should be encouraged, not hindered, in their efforts to find out what public officials and their employees are doing.
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