Back at the Capitol with nothing to show for it: Legislature fails to override Gov. Reeves’ vetoes

By Michael Goldberg, Gwen Dilworth and Taylor Vance | Originally published by Mississippi Today

Lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Wednesday with the single purpose of overriding several of Gov. Tate Reeves’ vetoes. After some debate and lots of sitting around and waiting for something to happen, they left without accomplishing that goal.

It was a stunning defeat for Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann that surprised lawmakers in both chambers, with some proclaiming they’d never witnessed such a blunder while serving in the Legislature. 

“I’ve been here since 1975, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Sen. Hillman Frazier, a Democrat from Jackson. 

The Republican-dominated Legislature chose to return after adjourning for just under two weeks to try to override some of the vetoes handed down by the Republican governor. 

It is rare for lawmakers to override a veto, or even attempt to. Doing so takes a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate. But legislative leaders, presumably believing they had the votes to override the governor, hauled lawmakers from every corner of the state back to Jackson on Wednesday, where they spent hours mostly doing nothing, waiting for Hosemann and the Senate to act. 

In the days and hours before lawmakers reconvened in Jackson, Reeves inveighed against Republican Hosemann and other unnamed lawmakers who appeared poised to defy him on at least a few of the vetoes he issued in recent days. Much of his ire was reserved for Sen. Hob Bryan of Amory, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Public Health Committee. Bryan was the author of a bill Reeves vetoed that would have increased oversight of his spending hundreds of millions of federal dollars for rural health care.   

The House made good on its intent to override at least one of Reeves’ vetoes – unanimously reapproving a measure to fund nonprofit organizations working to combat opioid addiction – and appeared ready to take up other vetoes pending the Senate taking action.

But the effort stalled in the upper chamber, and House members waited for hours with nothing to do.

Hosemann’s failure to garner enough votes to thwart the governor later became apparent after a measure to override Reeves’ veto of the opioid settlement provision, which would have sent $1.55 million to three groups working to fight addiction, was defeated in a 31-19 vote. Nearly all of the chamber’s Democrats voted against the measure. Hours earlier, the House had voted 110-0 to override Reeves’ veto of the bill. 

Senate Democrats successfully blocked that veto override attempt, and blocked passage of a joint resolution to extend a sunset on youth courts, in what they later revealed was a protest vote. After it became clear that Democrats were going to successfully block any legislative action, Senate leaders chose to end their work on Wednesday evening without debating other measures. 

Now that there is no state law extending the operation of youth courts, the state Supreme Court will likely have to give interim administrative orders to youth court judges directing how they should operate, lawmakers said.

Senate Democrats chose to protest rather than help Republicans override any vetoes. They did so because they objected to Hosemann not allowing them to override Reeves’ veto of Bryan’s bill to provide oversight for the Rural Health Transformation Program. 

The federally funded program is being overseen solely by Reeves to the chagrin of some lawmakers. Senate Democrats said they believed overriding the veto would increase the transparency of the program and ensure the funds go to support struggling rural hospitals. They also noted the Legislature has clear authority, and “power of the purse strings,” to control spending of state and federal money on Mississippians’ behalf.

“If we can’t do that, not even let us vote on it, we’re voting ‘no’ on everything,” Bryan said.

Bryan said the program, which awarded nearly $206 million to the state in the first year of five years of funding, is now doomed to continue to operate in secrecy without input from the Legislature or rural Mississippians.

“The insiders, even as we speak, have got their applications ready, will snatch up all the money, while the people in rural communities who were supposed to be getting help out of this won’t even have an opportunity to have a word about it, to say anything,” Bryan said. “Every single decision has been made in private. Every single decision has been made without any public access at all and that’s what’s going to happen with this money. It’s going to be insiders.”

It’s unclear why Hosemann did not allow the Senate to vote on overriding Reeves’ veto of the rural health care oversight. Several Democratic lawmakers said the Senate had the necessary votes to reverse the governor’s action, but some Republicans disputed that. 

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican, said he was “puzzled” by what transpired in the Senate and “disappointed by their actions, but not surprised.” He pointed to political pressure that Reeves likely applied to senators wary of crossing him.

“The governor does what he does and enacted his politics into the Senate, I guess, to sway those folks who had voted for those bills to now not vote to override him,” White said. “Certainly, that’s his prerogative. He’s way better at that political game than I am.” 

House Minority Leader Derrick Simmons of Greenville said he had hoped the Senate would address the rural health bill first because it originated in that chamber.

“Because the Senate did not bring it up, Senate Democrats were not really interested in considering anything else,” Simmons said.

Hosemann’s office did not respond to a request for comment after adjournment. 

In his April 2 veto message, Reeves said the legislation attempting to provide more oversight could jeopardize the state’s access to the rural health funding by slowing down distribution and potentially resulting in a loss of up to $1 billion to the state over five years. States may risk losing federal funding if they change plans approved during the application process.

Reeves said in a Tuesday night post on social media that Bryan, Hosemann and other state legislators “would rather stick it to the Republican governor and to President Trump than acknowledge they are jeopardizing over $1 billion to improve healthcare in rural communities across our state.”

He said the funds are already subject to comprehensive federal competitive procurement, monitoring and audit requirements, and that all awards will be made public. 

“There’s nothing more for politicians in our state to do on this,” Reeves wrote. 

White disputed Reeves’ claim that the bill the governor vetoed would jeopardize federal funds.

“It had some guardrails in place that are reasonable, and again, voted for overwhelmingly by both ends of this building,” White said. “He’s well within his rights to lobby members not to override his veto there, but to say it would have in any way impeded or hindered or caused us to miss out on money, that was just never going to happen.”    

Mirroring the sentiment between the House and Senate that led to the demise of numerous other notable bills this session, the chambers were divided again on Wednesday.   

Other measures that died because of the legislative failure to override the governor are:

• A measure that would have restored suffrage to someone who had been convicted of shoplifting and a drug charge. 
• Spending for two Gulf Coast Restoration Fund projects.
• A bill creating a loan program for Gulf Coast Restoration Fund projects. 
• A measure that would have funded projects Reeves had previously vetoed.
• Funding for seven special projects in legislators’ home districts.

The House chose not to override vetoes on several projects included in a pot of money for local projects. That included $1 million to Jackson for upgrades to the city’s planetarium, $500,000 to Greenville for renovations of a city park, $600,000 to Greene County for repairs of the Greene County Rural Events Center and other funding meant for state agencies.

Rep. Omeria Scott, a Democrat from Laurel, urged the Republican-controlled chamber to stand up to Reeves and override all of his vetoes. 

“It’s time for us to use the stick on this governor,” Scott said.

When Hosemann returned to preside over the Senate in the closing moments of the 2026 session Wednesday night, the reality became clear: The governor would escape unscathed. 

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article