This week, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves used an extremely powerful tool at the disposal of his office to erase $500,000 from a proposed project for downtown Greenville.
The line-item veto allows the governor to cut specific items from a bill without using veto on the entire bill.
It is perhaps the most powerful tool at the governor’s disposal. He can’t actively create legislation, but he sure can stop all or parts of any bill.
And one thing Reeves is really good at is saying ‘No’ to things.
From the press release describing his action: “I vetoed some spending that is simply not state taxpayers’ responsibility: a privately-owned pool, green space around a federal courthouse, city office upgrades, and a parking lot for a convention center that the state gave up long ago in order to end a losing investment. We gave it up for this express reason: to avoid putting you on the hook for these types of expenses. I also vetoed some money that would have gone to private interests that are better served in existing state programs that have accountability and oversight—not earmarks.”
Here's the list of the items Reeves struck from the spending bill:
- $1 million to build a parking lot at the Jackson Convention Center,
- $1 million to the Scenic River Development for their golf course,
- $250,000 to Briarwood Pool,
- $2 million for the City of Jackson Planetarium,
- $500,000 to the City of Greenville for green space next to the Federal Courthouse,
- $13.25 million for, among other things, a golf park and trail at LeFleur’s Bluff,
- $1 million to the City of Pascagoula to assist with renovations of city offices,
- $50,000 to Arise and Shine, Inc. in Copiah County,
- $200,000 to Summit Community Development Foundation for costs associated with the Stand Pipe project, and
- $7.5 million in earmarks that would be distributed to private companies through the Mississippi Development Authority without the normal financial/economic impact analysis.
This is a truly astonishing piece of fiscal responsibility by the governor. He carved out less than 1% — actually about .08% — of the almost $2.4 billion spending bill for infrastructure improvements throughout the state.
Greenville’s $500,000 greenspace project could be funded easily with the astonishing amount of this money that will be mismanaged in the coming years.
It is obvious Reeves has no idea what the plans for the green space were to have been. He doesn’t even know where it was going to be.
The project was not around the courthouse. Heck, it wasn’t even beside it.
But our little project gets swept up in a vain attempt by the governor to act like he is being somehow fiscally responsible with billions of dollars in federal money.
He says he used the veto to avoid putting us on the hook for these type of expenses.
I’m perfectly happy to be on the hook for this type of expense in Greenville. I think everyone who has attended a Delta Hot Tamale Festival in the last few years would be as well. The green space project was to serve as a centerpiece for what is becoming a revitalized downtown.
It galls me that one man with a stroke of a pen can simply decide what is good for us in Greenville.
The project isn’t dead, there’s still $500,000 in federal money to be used to create the green space in the 500 block of Washington Avenue. As we’ve done in the past, we’ll make do with what we have.
That’s a lot of money, but public works projects are expensive.
So expensive, in fact, that they are often accomplished on the backs of federal and state fund injections into local project.
But from where do the state and federal funds come?
Those funds come from us.
Those funds come from the taxes we pay. (Actually, these funds were created out of thin air by Federal legislation.)
But Tate Reeves decided on his own to cut $500,000 out of a $2.4 billion spending bill to fane some kind of fiscal responsibility.
It — like his decisions to not expand Medicaid, to pass resolutions supporting Confederate Heritage Month and fail to fully fund MAEP — are laughable in their absurdity.
Jon Alverson is proud to be publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.comor call him at 662-335-1155.
