Mississippi Today
Will Gov. Reeves break out his veto stamp on Legislature's 'Christmas tree' bill of pet projects?

Will Gov. Reeves break out his veto stamp on Legislature’s ‘Christmas tree’ bill of pet projects?
In their final act of the 2023 session, in the wee hours of the morning April 1, Mississippi lawmakers passed a “Christmas tree” bill with $372 million in local pet projects.
It includes spending on parks, theaters, museums, city halls and courthouses, streets, volunteer fire stations, boat ramps and waterfront developments. From Adams County to Zama, nearly every hamlet — and every lawmaker — in Mississippi got a taste of the election-year spending.
Now the question is, will Gov. Tate Reeves veto some or all of the spending? He did last year, albeit selectively, nixing 10 projects worth about $27 million out of a similar $223 million local projects bill. This year’s bill even includes a re-try by lawmakers of some of the specific projects he vetoed last year.
But Reeves is up for reelection this year, facing Democratic challenger Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, whose knocks on Reeves include that he’s out-of-touch with rural and average Mississippians. Reeves may be reluctant to veto spending on projects with grassroots local support and anger lawmakers and their constituents during an election year.
FULL LIST: The pet projects lawmakers passed during the 2023 legislative session
Reeves called the projects he vetoed last year “wasteful” spending, but critics at the time noted that he approved most of the dozens of projects in the bill, including some that appeared very similar to the ones he vetoed.
For instance, he vetoed $500,000 last year for a green-space park around the federal courthouse in Greenville, but approved many other city beautification projects across the state.
Jackson bore the brunt of the governor’s 2022 vetoes, with four projects including upgrades to the capital city’s planetarium, a golf course and nature trail at LeFleur’s Bluff State Park. Reeves said the city had too many other problems, including crumbling infrastructure and crime, to be spending money on parks and a planetarium. But many other cities whose parks, museum and other projects he approved also have dire infrastructure and other major issues.
For this year, lawmakers re-upped $2 million in funding for Jackson’s planetarium in the projects bill. They also included in another bill money for LeFleur’s Bluff Park, although it is apparently not earmarked for golf course renovations.
Explaining his vetoes to reporters last year, Reeves said, “I vetoed some spending that is simply not state taxpayers’ responsibility.” He said this included city office upgrades. In this year’s bill, lawmakers funded numerous renovation projects for city and county government offices along with coliseums, amphitheaters, music halls and civic centers.
READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves blocks state funding for major Jackson park improvement, planetarium
When asked for comment this week about his plans for the Christmas tree bill, Reeves’ spokesman Cory Custer said in a statement: “Mississippi Today is not a news organization, it is an unregistered Democrat PAC.”
Reeves has until April 22 to sign the bill into law or exercise his veto authority. The Mississippi Constitution gives governors the authority to issue partial or line-item vetoes of appropriations bills, though, there is debate about whether his vetoes last year were legal.
But since they never were challenged in court, the vetoes stood.
This year, if he vetoes any of the projects approved by legislators, there will be similar questions about whether the vetoes are legal.
In legislative parlance the bill containing most of the projects is not an appropriations bill. Another bill appropriates funds to the Department of Finance and Administration to fund the projects. But the projects themselves are in what is known as a general bill, which according to the constitution the governor must veto in whole or not at all.
House Speaker Philip Gunn said of last year’s vetoes, “… I am not aware of any provision under the law that allows the governor to veto partially a general bill. He has to veto all of it or none of it … That may be more than people want to understand but there are differences in the types of bills we have up here.”
And Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, who successfully won a lawsuit against former Gov. Kirk Fordice for his partial vetoes in the 1990s, said of Reeves’ 2022 vetoes, “We’re just transferring money from one account to another, or from one purpose to another. That is not an appropriation. That is a transfer. I understand that to be what they are arguing and will not be subject to the line item.”
But in the end, no one challenged Reeves’ vetoes last year.
Eash year the Legislature approves similar projects throughout the state, but the number approved during the 2003 session is historic. Legislators were able to expend such a large amount of funds on such projects because of unprecedented revenue growth in recent years.
Legislators have opted to spend those funds on such projects while not expanding Medicaid to ensure health care for primarily for the working poor and while not fully funding public education.
Also, for two years legislators have opted to leave a huge amount of revenue unspent.
Legislators submit their priority projects to the leadership early in the session. During the final days of the session, a small group of legislative leaders meet behind closed doors to determine how much money is available for projects and which projects will be funded.
Each year rank-and-file legislators learn late in the session whether their projects were funded. This year they learned soon after the clock rolled over to April Fool’s Day — April 1.
They will learn in the coming days whether their projects will survive Tate Reeves’ veto pen.
READ MORE: Latest Reeves vetoes could again expand governor’s power
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1939, Billie Holiday recorded ‘Strange Fruit’

April 20, 1939

Legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday stepped into a Fifth Avenue studio and recorded “Strange Fruit,” a song written by Jewish civil rights activist Abel Meeropol, a high school English teacher upset about the lynchings of Black Americans — more than 6,400 between 1865 and 1950.
Meeropol and his wife had adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were orphaned after their parents’ executions for espionage.
Holiday was drawn to the song, which reminded her of her father, who died when a hospital refused to treat him because he was Black. Weeks earlier, she had sung it for the first time at the Café Society in New York City. When she finished, she didn’t hear a sound.
“Then a lone person began to clap nervously,” she wrote in her memoir. “Then suddenly everybody was clapping.”
The song sold more than a million copies, and jazz writer Leonard Feather called it “the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism.”
After her 1959 death, both she and the song went into the Grammy Hall of Fame, Time magazine called “Strange Fruit” the song of the century, and the British music publication Q included it among “10 songs that actually changed the world.”
David Margolick traces the tune’s journey through history in his book, “Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song.” Andra Day won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Holiday in the film, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Mississippi Today
Mississippians are asked to vote more often than people in most other states

Not long after many Mississippi families celebrate Easter, they will be returning to the polls to vote in municipal party runoff elections.
The party runoff is April 22.
A year does not pass when there is not a significant election in the state. Mississippians have the opportunity to go to the polls more than voters in most — if not all — states.
In Mississippi, do not worry if your candidate loses because odds are it will not be long before you get to pick another candidate and vote in another election.
Mississippians go to the polls so much because it is one of only five states nationwide where the elections for governor and other statewide and local offices are held in odd years. In Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana, the election for governor and other statewide posts are held the year after the federal midterm elections. For those who might be confused by all the election lingo, the federal midterms are the elections held two years after the presidential election. All 435 members of the U.S. House and one-third of the membership of the U.S. Senate are up for election during every midterm. In Mississippi, there also are important judicial elections that coincide with the federal midterms.
Then the following year after the midterms, Mississippians are asked to go back to the polls to elect a governor, the seven other statewide offices and various other local and district posts.
Two states — Virginia and New Jersey — are electing governors and other state and local officials this year, the year after the presidential election.
The elections in New Jersey and Virginia are normally viewed as a bellwether of how the incumbent president is doing since they are the first statewide elections after the presidential election that was held the previous year. The elections in Virginia and New Jersey, for example, were viewed as a bad omen in 2021 for then-President Joe Biden and the Democrats since the Republican in the swing state of Virginia won the Governor’s Mansion and the Democrats won a closer-than-expected election for governor in the blue state of New Jersey.
With the exception of Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia and New Jersey, all other states elect most of their state officials such as governor, legislators and local officials during even years — either to coincide with the federal midterms or the presidential elections.
And in Mississippi, to ensure that the democratic process is never too far out of sight and mind, most of the state’s roughly 300 municipalities hold elections in the other odd year of the four-year election cycle — this year.
The municipal election impacts many though not all Mississippians. Country dwellers will have no reason to go to the polls this year except for a few special elections. But in most Mississippi municipalities, the offices for mayor and city council/board of aldermen are up for election this year.
Jackson, the state’s largest and capital city, has perhaps the most high profile runoff election in which state Sen. John Horhn is challenging incumbent Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in the Democratic primary.
Mississippi has been electing its governors in odd years for a long time. The 1890 Mississippi Constitution set the election for governor for 1895 and “every four years thereafter.”
There is an argument that the constant elections in Mississippi wears out voters, creating apathy resulting in lower voter turnout compared to some other states.
Turnout in presidential elections is normally lower in Mississippi than the nation as a whole. In 2024, despite the strong support for Republican Donald Trump in the state, 57.5% of registered voters went to the polls in Mississippi compared to the national average of 64%, according to the United States Elections Project.
In addition, Mississippi Today political reporter Taylor Vance theorizes that the odd year elections for state and local officials prolonged the political control for Mississippi Democrats. By 1948, Mississippians had started to vote for a candidate other than the Democrat for president. Mississippians began to vote for other candidates — first third party candidates and then Republicans — because of the national Democratic Party’s support of civil rights.
But because state elections were in odd years, it was easier for Mississippi Democrats to distance themselves from the national Democrats who were not on the ballot and win in state and local races.
In the modern Mississippi political environment, though, Republicans win most years — odd or even, state or federal elections. But Democrats will fare better this year in municipal elections than they do in most other contests in Mississippi, where the elections come fast and often.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1977, Alex Haley awarded Pulitzer for ‘Roots’

April 19, 1977

Alex Haley was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for “Roots,” which was also adapted for television.
Network executives worried that the depiction of the brutality of the slave experience might scare away viewers. Instead, 130 million Americans watched the epic miniseries, which meant that 85% of U.S. households watched the program.
The miniseries received 36 Emmy nominations and won nine. In 2016, the History Channel, Lifetime and A&E remade the miniseries, which won critical acclaim and received eight Emmy nominations.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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