News headlines the past couple weeks have tracked thusly:

• Mississippi tax cut plan would cut $1.1 billion in income.
• Mississippi’s Republican governor intent on income tax cut even if states receive less federal money.
• Mississippi’s Republican governor pushes income tax cut, says critics rely on ‘myths.’

But just eight years ago, headlines read:

• Gov. Bryant to cut budget for second time this year, pull from rainy day fund.
• On the chopping block: Mental health, universities.
• Health department closing two-thirds of regional offices.
• Agencies lower state’s credit rating, outlook.

Another great tax cut debate has begun in the Mississippi Legislature, a recurring theme in recent years with state coffers relatively flush and the economy cooking just below a boil.

The broad strokes of the debate, also a recurring theme, are Republican House leaders want to overhaul the entire state tax structure — eliminate the income tax, increase sales and gasoline taxes and provide a net huge tax cut, $1.1 billion when all in. Senate leaders urge more caution, to cut taxes again but take smaller, prudent steps and wait for the dust to settle on record tax cuts recently passed and still being phased in.

READ MORE: Mississippi House set to vote this week on income tax elimination-gas tax increase plan

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is on the sidelines, appearing to cheer on the House income tax elimination plan, but leery of any tax “swap” increase in sales or gasoline taxes as offsets. He has in the past voiced strong opposition to any such increase even if the net is a cut for most Mississippians.

Those who urge caution in cutting or overhauling the tax structure mention past experience, and they don’t have to look back too far. Eight years ago, from a combination of dozens of tax cuts the Legislature approved and a slumping economy, the state saw a budget crisis that resulted in severely underfunded schools, state government layoffs, a near halt to building new roads and highways and problems maintaining the ones we have, too few state troopers on the highway and cuts to most major state services.

Lawmakers in a few years leading up to the slump had enacted more than 50 tax cuts, from large to small, including what was at the time the largest tax cut in state history to be phased in over years. But their spending had increased.

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant was forced to make emergency mid-year cuts to the state budget five times and to raid the state’s “rainy day” savings account from 2016-2017. Mississippi law requires the state to operate with a balanced budget, and when shortfalls top 2%, the governor is required to make cuts to true the budget.

Mississippi, it has been said, is often first in and last out when it comes to a recessionary economy.

But bad times, like good times, don’t last forever, and the last four years have seen record revenue for the state. And record spending. Since those economic slump days of 2016 and 2017, state general fund spending has risen from about $6 billion to more than $7 billion, with a hefty $1 billion surplus to boot.

House leaders say the time to enact a long-championed tax structure overhaul and elimination of the income tax is now — do it while we can.

“If you say, ‘How can we do that?’ I’d say look at the last four years,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, author of the latest House tax overhaul plan. “We can do it because we’ve shown we can do it.”

Tax cuts, and structural changes, can have a stimulating effect on the economy.

But it would appear the current push to cut taxes or overhaul the structure does not include any major belt tightening with state government. And much, perhaps most, of the current largesse is a result of the federal government pumping trillions of dollars post-pandemic into the national economy and billions into Mississippi’s. That spigot will likely be turned off with a new administration in Washington. Will Mississippi’s good times continue to roll? House leaders appear to be betting on the come.

But Senate President Protem Dean Kirby, the longest serving Republican in the Legislature, has seen the other effects that ill timed or poorly thought out cuts can bring, especially coupled with a faltering economy.

“I’ve been here long enough I’ve seen the ups and downs,” Kirby said on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast. “What goes up comes down. A majority of the people in the Legislature — now including, I hate to say it, the leadership — haven’t been here during the down periods … and right now we’re here in the beginning of a down period. We were, what, $116 million below (projections) last month … We need to be very, very careful that we don’t go through the same we have in the past where we would cut everyone’s budget and every state agency and schools.”

PODCAST: ‘Deja vu all over again’: Senate President Protem Dean Kirby outlines 2025 issues

Senate leaders including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann say they, too, want tax cuts, just more modest ones. And they do not appear onboard with the swaps and shifts of increases in other taxes. Hosemann does support a cut to the tax on groceries, or unprepared food items.

In large part because the House plan includes a long called for steady stream of money for transportation infrastructure — a 5% sales tax on gasoline — and a cut in taxes on groceries, many House Democrats appear to be on board with the proposal. It’s unclear whether Senate Democrats would lean more towards a House or Senate approach.

The proposed 5% tax on gasoline — which would be about 13 cents a gallon with current average prices — along with a 1.5-cents-on-the dollar increase in the state’s 7% sales tax will perhaps be the toughest sell with Mississippi citizens. Particularly, retirees not paying income taxes now might view this as a net hike for them. And the House restructuring would make the state’s taxing more “regressive,” which would hit people with limited income and those of modest means the most.

It would appear some tax cuts are in the offing with the 2025 Legislature from its GOP supermajorities in both chambers.

The debate will not be on whether to cut, but how and by how much — a battle of moderation versus bold action.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The former leader of Mississippi’s public health insurance program for children, pregnant women, low income and disabled people has been tapped to run the overarching federal program, Politico reported Tuesday.

Drew Snyder is expected to assume leadership of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Medicaid division after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office Jan. 20.

Snyder left his helm at the Division of Medicaid in October after nearly seven years in the role, where he was one of the agency’s longest-serving directors. He served under two Republican governors who thwarted Medicaid expansion and staunched the flow of billions of federal dollars to provide health insurance to low-income Mississippians for over a decade. 

He then became the leader of a new health care collaborative housed within a powerful multi-state, Jackson-based lobbying firm that has donated thousands of dollars to Republican officials’ campaigns. The firm’s political action committee has contributed nearly $75,000 to Republic Gov. Tate Reeves since 2018. 

Snyder, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, will presumably leave his role weeks into the Mississippi legislative session and with just two months under his belt in the position.

Advocates for Medicaid fear that Trump’s return to the White House may mean drastic cuts for the federal program that provides health insurance coverage to over 79 million Americans. 

Trump made little mention of his plans for the program during his 2024 campaign. But during his first term, Trump encouraged work requirements and introduced waivers to cap funding for state programs in exchange for fewer federal regulations. No states adopted the waiver. 

Trump has nominated Dr. Memhet Oz, a former cardiothoracic surgeon and TV personality, to be administrator of the federal agency. Snyder will serve under Oz’s leadership if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Oz has no experience running a government agency. 

Snyder left Mississippi Medicaid in what he described as “the best fiscal shape in its history,” at the Joint Legislative Budget Committee Hearing in September 2024, less than two weeks before he announced his resignation. The state’s appropriation will likely increase in coming years due to reduced federal public health emergency dollars and dwindling agency surplus funds.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Drax, the British owner of wood pellet plants in Mississippi and Louisiana that has paid millions in fines and settlements for violating state pollution laws in recent years, has received at least $762 million in “green” loans during that same period, an investigation by The Examination, The Toronto Star and Mississippi Today found. 

The energy company ships out wood pellets made in North America for other countries to use as a power source to meet their carbon reduction goals. But state regulators in both Mississippi and Louisiana have come down on Drax over its local air pollution. Between penalties and settlements over the last five years, Drax has had to pay out over a combined $5 million to the two states. 

Since 2018, banks have issued $1.5 trillion in low-interest “sustainability-linked loans,” or SLLs, to large corporations to motivate climate-friendly practices. Wood biomass companies, such as Drax, alone received over $76 billion in SLLs between 2018 and 2023, the investigation found using data from the London Stock Exchange and the Environmental Paper Network.

Drax received two such loans: one in 2020 that became the equivalent of $553 million – issued by a group of banks including Bank of America, Barclays and JP Morgan – and another in 2021 equal to $208 million.

While companies have environmental benchmarks that go with the loans, there’s little oversight or public disclosure over what those goals are or whether the companies accomplish them. Drax maintains it has reduced its overall carbon footprint since receiving its SLLs; according to its most recent annual report, the company lowered its carbon emissions by 27% from 2020 to 2023. 

However scientists around the world have argued for years that using wood pellets for electricity actually creates more carbon emissions than using coal or gas. Not only does burning pellets release carbon into the air, but so does cutting down the trees – which store carbon and take years to regrow – to make the pellets.

“As numerous studies have shown, this burning of wood will increase warming for decades to centuries,” hundreds of professors and other experts wrote in a 2021 letter to world leaders including President Biden. “That is true even when the wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas.”

Despite the wide-ranging contentions, global industrial leaders like the United Kingdom have embraced biomass, including wood pellets, as an energy source. The U.K.’s 2024 “Clean Power 2030 Action Plan” says biomass could be an important part of its transition to clean energy, and in 2023 a quarter of the country’s renewable energy generation came from “biogenic” sources such as biomass.

In a written response to questions for this story, Drax defended the use of pellets for electricity.

“While we recognize that there is an on-going debate with respect to the range of solutions required to most effectively combat the climate crisis, we believe that energy from biomass, when sourced sustainably, is an important contributor to the decarbonization of electricity generation,” the company said via e-mail.

But Drax, which mostly uses wood from the United States and Canada, recently came under fire over how it sources its pellets. Last year, the UK government issued a 25 million pound fine to the company, in part because Drax failed to fully detail where it sourced wood pellets made in Canada. 

In Mississippi, environmental regulators fined the company $225,000 last year for releasing 50% over its permitted limit of hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs, from its plant in the small town of Gloster. But meanwhile, the company is applying to become a “major” source of HAPs, a designation that allows greater emissions with added pollution reduction controls. 

Allison Brouk, a senior attorney for EarthJustice, said it doesn’t make sense that Drax gets to graduate through the regulatory system the way it has.

“They applied for a minor source permit, emitted at major source levels until they were fined and (state regulators) made them change that,” Brouk said. “It’s a pattern Drax has taken, somehow, just to work with the system.”  

Last year’s fine was Drax’s second in Mississippi for violating air pollutant limits. In 2020, the state fined Drax $2.5 million, one of the largest such penalties in state history, for emitting over three times the legal limit for volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Shortly after the fine was announced, Drax announced receiving its first SLL. 

State regulators found that Drax also exceeded its legal limit of VOC releases at its two plants in Louisiana. While the company didn’t have to admit to any wrongdoing, Drax agreed to pay a  combined settlement of $3.2 million in 2022. It was the largest amount paid to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in the last decade, The Times-Picayune reported. 

In September, Drax announced plans to invest $12.5 billion to develop its biomass operation in the U.S. with added carbon capture and storage technology, Reuters reported. Groups like the National Resources Defense Council, though, argue that the technology will only lead to greater emissions.  

While the intended goal of SLLs is to encourage sustainable practices in large corporations, loan recipients in some cases have framed their emissions metrics in misleading ways, The Examination found. To read the outlet’s full investigation into the world of SLLs, click here.

This investigation is reported in partnership with The Examination, Mississippi Today and Toronto Star. This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.