Legislators from throughout Mississippi headed back to Jackson this week for the 2019 Legislative Session. Although this is an election year, when many politicians avoid hot topics such as gun control and abortion, Senators and Representatives already have a long list of ideas to bring to the Legislature in the three-month session.
Sen. Terry C. Burton, R-Newton, who also serves as Pro Tempore of the Mississippi Senate, said there were two items in particular he would be pushing for.
“One of those is Rural Broadband Access,” Burton said.
Many areas in Newton, Scott and Lauderdale counties, along with many other parts of the state, are highly rural, with limited to no broadband options, Burton said. Mississippi Public Service Commission is lobbying the Legislature to allow rural electric cooperatives to provide high-speed internet access in addition to providing electric utilities.
“I’m going to be working with them to help them do that,” he said.
State Rep. Randy Rushing, R-Decatur, plans to support allowing electric cooperatives the opportunity to offer rural internet access if it comes up during the session.
“Rural internet access is very importation to the people of my district,” Rushing said. “A lot of my district covers rural areas, and they need access to reliable, affordable internet. If the electric cooperatives have the capability and want to offer the service, they should have that option.”
Burton said he would also be working on a bill, “freeing up the nurse practitioners to do what they’re trained to do.”
“There’s a major shortage of primary care physicians in our state,” he said. “I will be working to allow our nurse practitioners to fill in some of the gaps.”
Burton said he hopes to remove restrictions on what nurse practitioners can and cannot do, increasing access to health care for Mississippians.
And, of course, it’s a budget year. One of the largest issues surrounding the budget this year is a proposal by Gov. Phil Bryant to raise salaries for teachers by $50 million over the next two years and possibly raise salaries for government employees as well. Burton said he supported both of those ideas, so long as the funds could be found in the budget.
“They’ve been a long time without a raise,” he said. “I’d like to do what I can if we can find it in the budget.”
Rushing said he is willing to support pay raises for state employees including teachers in the 2020 budget if it is fiscally responsible to do so.
“If we do it, we have to know that we’re going to have to continue to pay those salaries from now on,” Rushing said. “Even a small increase across the board equals millions of dollars. We might have the money now, but then in a few years we might not. So we have to be careful when we are increasing salaries.”
Personally, Rushing is planning to reintroduce a bill that would give Department of Human Services more muscle to intervene in situations where seniors who are on social security are being mistreated by caregivers.
“The bill would allow DHS to go in and do more about caregivers who are mismanaging or taking seniors social security checks but aren’t offering proper care for them,” Rushing said. “DHS may have the power to do that, but I just want to give them a little more teeth to intervene in those situations.”
Rushing also plans to introduce a bill that would allow rural water suppliers to raise the rates of all customers regardless of how far they are from the supplier. Currently, those rural water systems would have to appeal to the Legislature to raise rates of customers that are outside of a certain distance from the water supplier.
“This would give them the power to appeal to the Public Service Commission to raise rates of all customers instead of having to go to the Legislature to raise rates on the customers outside of the mileage limit,” Rushing said.
