This week at you Capitol, the Senate began with a hearing on the budget outlooks for the fiscal year. Unfortunately, the outlook is bleak for the months of March, April, May, and June. As expected, the sharp plummet into the current recession has caused substantial shortfalls in the expected revenues. We heard from State Economist, Dr. Darrin Webb and Herb Frierson, Commissioner of the state Department of Revenue who forecast a near $400 million decrease in state revenues. The state economist forecasted that the climb out of this recession will be long and not likely to bring our economy back to 2019 levels for several years. Though his forecast was alarming, there was hope in that many towns did not see sales tax revenues decline to the levels once expected. Many credit that to the grocery stores, hardware stores, drug stores and retail stores that remained open throughout the closures.
Moving forward with he forecast at hand, the Senate took first action on Senate appropriations bills passing a proposed 2021 Fiscal Year total state support budget of $6.015 billion that contains recommended reductions of up to 6.5 percent for most agencies. These reductions are a response to the recession of 2020 caused by business closures due to COVID-19 as mentioned. The 2021 Senate recommendation would fund K-12 education at $2.435 billion – 5.73 percent lower than the $2.573 billion it received in 2020. It would further provide a $653.9 million budget for higher education and a $229.9 million budget for community and junior colleges. The 2021 Fiscal Year begins July 1. These bills now move to the House for consideration or conference. We expect a week of committee meetings and potential conferences to move bills along.
In more promising news, qualified Mississippi small businesses received their first notification of the immediate relief payments brought forth in the $300 million Back to Business Program passed by the legislature. Those payments are in the amount of $2,000 and are meant to provide immediate relief for those businesses forced to close. The grant portion of that program is set to begin within the next two weeks with all businesses of less than 50 employees being eligible. These grants range from $1,500 to $25,000 and are provided to cover employee salaries, utilities, rent, and other expenses related to COVID-19. I encourage you to seek out additional information at the website: www.backtobusinessms.org . Your Senate looks forward to working with the House and Governor to provide additional assistance to other areas of the economy that were impacted. The remaining amounts provided from the CARES Act are set to be appropriated for use as soon as possible. We hope to have a proposed plan within the next week.
Lastly, I want to touch on the CARES Act assistance for farmers. Beginning on May 26th, the Farm Service Agency Offices began accepting applications for assistance for row crop farmers and livestock farmers. These amounts vary by commodity but provide payments to assist with the losses felt by the family farmers around the state. I encourage you to contact your Farm Service Agency Office to apply.
As always, thank you for allowing me to serve you. Please practice common sense as we move forward. Let us not to act recklessly but to act responsibly in our social activities. Stay safe my friends.
