Mississippi’s lieutenant governor, speaker of the House of Representatives, and for most part all of the Mississippi Legislature essentially told Mississippians to stay the hell out of their business on Monday.
You should be offended. For their business, is supposed to be your business.
These state leaders denied a request on Monday to release their correspondence related to their efforts to kill Initiative 42 – the citizen-led effort seeking adequate funding of the MAEP budget formula that lawmakers have essentially ignored since voting it into law in 1997.
Joel McNeece
The Associated Press reported Monday night that Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves responded to the public records request by forwarding it to the Senate Rules Committee, even though the committee has no responsibility or authority over records requests from his office. Speaker Phillip Gunn simply declined to respond by the deadline set forth by Mississippi’s Public Records Act. Gunn claimed that the Legislature has the power to regulate public access to its records. We can’t have these nosy citizens getting into “our business” down here at the Capitol. It’s quite clear these lawmakers are of the opinion they are in Jackson to make laws for you to follow, but they certainly aren’t expected to adhere to such rules themselves.
Their refusal to release this information is a slap in the face to every Mississippian, but it also raises questions as to what they’re hiding about their efforts to thwart the citizen-led initiative. If everything is on the up-and-up, if all their work on this issue is for the betterment of Mississippi, why the need to hide any of it? Wouldn’t you want to shout it from a mountaintop?
Charlie Mitchell, assistant dean of journalism at Ole Miss, long time political columnist and advocate for open records, told the Associated Press on Monday that this turn of events is unprecedented.
“I can’t remember a request for a document ever - not once - being referred to a legislative committee,” Mitchell said. “There is no mention of the Legislature in the request and there’s no mention of the Rules Committee in the Open Records statute having any say-so about public documents. With the vote looming on a much-discussed citizen initiative, one we all agree could be crucial to the future of public education, it certainly seems logical that people should have access to all documents that have been created.”
Since the moment that more than 200,000 Mississippians signed on to Initiative 42, securing its place on November’s ballot, state lawmakers have spewed tales that its passage would put the fate of our educational system and the state budget in a Hinds County chancery judge’s hands.
To put it simply, that’s a bunch of malarkey, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from these leaders. Their rhetoric has made it clear that education funding isn’t their concern in this issue (although that’s been clear based on their actions the past 20 years), rather it’s a perceived loss of power.
Heaven forbid citizens, rather than the Legislature, actually take control of adequately funding our schools.
Their callous disregard for state law, whether education funding or now hiding their actions from the public, is nothing less than shameful.
Email Joel McNeece at joelmcneece@gmail.com & follow him on Twitter @joelmcneece