Unless there are massive and unexpected compromises soon, it looks like the Mississippi Legislature’s 2026 session will end without progress on a number of prominent issues.
It’s as if two different political parties — or two groups of people from different planets — are running things in Jackson instead of Republicans, who hold the vast majority of the Capitol’s power. The levels of disagreement are so extreme that it’s easier to compile a short list of what the leaders of the House and Senate both approve,rather than work on a grocery shopping list of what they don’t.
Chief among the disputed issues is school choice. The House passed a comprehensive bill that would give families options on a public school for their child, and would provide state money for private school education as well. A Senate committee killed the bill in less than two minutes and the House had no interest in the Senate’s less ambitious proposal, which would have allowed students in public schools to switch districts but did not address families who wanted to switch to private schools.
School choice advocates reacted with hostility to the House bill’s defeat. They overlooked that a surprising number of Republicans, first on the House floor and then in the Senate committee, cast votes against the bill. GOP opposition is the only way the bill could have died.
Funding for the Public Employees’ Retirement System is another problem. Early on, the Senate passed a bill to give PERS $500 million this year, and another $50 million annually for the next decade. It would have provided $1 billion to chip away at the system’s $26 billion unfunded liability.
But the House killed it, choosing instead to pass a mobile sports betting bill that it said would provide $40 million to $60 million in revenue each year, and all of it would go to PERS, along with a $600 million injection of other state cash. Over a decade, if that projection was correct, it would have provided at least the same $1 billion as the Senate wanted.
The Senate let mobile sports betting die, but since has attached its entire PERS funding proposal to a House bill that would set up state-approved retirement accounts for workers who don’t qualify for employee programs like a 401(k). That bill is on its way back to the House, approved 51-0 in the Senate, but it’s hard to see the House signing on.
One final disputed issue is how to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, whose business model has independent, locally owned pharmacies in financial trouble. Only in America could the quest for profits in a huge business squeeze out the small businesses that deliver medicine to a significant percentage of the population.
A recent column on the Magnolia Tribune website criticized senators for changing a House bill that addressed regulating pharmacy benefit managers. Among the changes columnist Russ Latino found objectionable was the addition of a dispensing fee for each prescription filled.
He has a point on that. It would seem more logical to require PBMs to abide by fair reimbursement rates to pharmacies if they wish to do business in the state, rather than raising the price of prescriptions.
The Senate has sent a revised PBM bill back to the House.
The larger issue, however, is that little of substance will get done if the House and Senate continue to have such divergent opinions. Granted, this is the way democratic government is designed. It takes time and compromise to get majorities in both chambers on board. But so far, there doesn’t seem to be much willingness to negotiate solutions.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
