A single phone call from then-House Speaker Billy McCoy in 2005 halted a plan to sell part of Mississippi’s future tobacco settlement payments, Mississippi Today reported.
Mississippi Today and its “Black Box” podcast said then-state Treasurer Tate Reeves had explained to lawmakers how the securitization would work and that the measure had passed the Senate. The report said McCoy called Appropriations Chairman Johnny Stringer minutes before a committee meeting and told him to kill the bill, after a meeting with Gulf Coast Rep. Diane Peranich, who opposed the plan.
The decision left lawmakers facing a $268 million Medicaid deficit, Mississippi Today reported. The Legislature considered and rejected a cigarette tax increase of 18 cents per pack and, after a special session called by Gov. Haley Barbour, ultimately cut Medicaid and withdrew $240 million from a health-care trust created with the tobacco settlement funds. The report said the trust was to be replenished but never was and now exists only in a limited form.
Mississippi Today noted the 1997 tobacco settlement guaranteed the state $4 billion over 25 years, with annual payments continuing thereafter. The report said the Legislature placed the funds in a trust in 1999 to use earnings for health care, but later drew from the trust to cover budget shortfalls; the most recent annual payment is about $90 million.
The news outlet also detailed comparisons between the tobacco settlements and the $430 million in opioid settlement funds Mississippi will receive over many years. Mississippi Today wrote that the state’s stronger revenue position after pandemic-era federal relief gives leaders an opportunity to direct opioid funds toward addiction treatment and prevention rather than repeat past decisions, but said how those funds will be spent remains under debate.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
