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In a recent dustup between the Legislature and Gov. Tate Reeves, lawmakers were demanding oversight and transparency on how he spends hundreds of millions of dollars meant to help rural hospitals.
That sounds mete and just. Who could argue that spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars shouldn’t be done in the open and by the rules?
But even as lawmakers passed a bill to foist transparency and rules on the governor’s rural health spending (spoiler alert: He vetoed it, and the Senate didn’t have the sand to try to override), they themselves were writing a taxpayer check for hundreds of millions of dollars. And they were doing it in a most non-transparent, unregulated way.
They passed a $253-million “Christmas tree” bill to fund hundreds of projects across the state – parks, museums, golf course, even an Elvis-themed hotel. But no one in the public, and few in the Legislature, knew exactly what was in this dog’s breakfast of government spending until after it was passed. Kinda like Christmas morning: big surprises. Some communities got toys and treats. Some got lumps of coal.
The projects earmarked in the Christmas tree bill aren’t chosen by any set guidelines, merits or based on a communities’ needs. They aren’t chosen by any independent oversight agency, or even really vetted by legislative committees. This spending is based on the good-old political spoils system.
Shockingly, the spending and projects are heavily weighted to areas represented by the most powerful legislative leaders. Otherwise, legislative leaders use the balance in a political carrot-and-stick manner. Vote the way the leadership wants, you might get rewarded with money for that sportsplex you want in your district. Buck the leadership, and your district might not get squat.
In a more perfect world, the bulk of these hundreds of millions of dollars would be applied to the greatest needs in such a poor state – perhaps creating economic development sites in the Delta, or revitalization in Jackson or, helping struggling rural hospitals. That would probably not include a private development of an Elvis-themed hotel in Tupelo (Reeves vetoed that, too).
Mississippi lawmakers talk a lot about transparency and oversight, and they try to apply it to others every chance they get. But they go to great pains to make sure no transparency ever splashes onto them.
Years ago, as a Capitol Press Corps colleague and I were cooling our heels waiting for lawmakers to do something, he opined that he wished he had one of those loud aerosol can horns, and that he would blow it any time a Mississippi official said the word transparency. I suggested we also get a can of Silly String and fire it off as well.
But I digress.
Mississippi government is not very transparent, and the Legislature is perhaps the least transparent of the bunch. It exempts itself from the open records and open meetings laws it levies on all other divisions of state government and has fought in court to keep some of its proceedings from the public and press.
Again, it’s hard to argue against the call for oversight and transparency in the governor’s spending of federal rural health dollars allocated to Mississippi.
But the Legislature’s own process of spending Mississippians’ money is a case study in opaqueness, shielded from sunshine even to many of the lawmakers ostensibly involved in the process.
