A recent column on the Mississippi Today website delivers an inside look at the sharply contrasting management styles of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn. It also questions whether closed gatherings of House Republicans violate the state’s Open Meetings Act.
Gunn comes out looking like many powerful speakers before him — keeping his troops on a tight leash. Mississippi Today said he is skilled at strong-arming fellow Republicans into voting for bills he authors or supports.
Gunn, the column added, tends to withhold details of his favored legislation from many lawmakers until shortly before bills are introduced, and there rarely is any public debate from Republicans about the bills.
A House Republican who won’t back one of Gunn’s bills is asked to speak with a committee chairman, Mississippi Today said. If the lawmaker is still unconvinced, he is sent to a private meeting with Gunn. The column cited several unidentified House Republicans as saying Gunn can be forceful in demanding support.
The tactics work. “This session, Gunn is the primary author on 14 major pieces of legislation that are still pending or have already passed,” the column said. “No House Republican has voted against a single one of those bills at any point during the legislative process.”
Gunn seems to have little in common with the way Hosemann handles Senate Republicans. A top GOP senator said this anonymously:
“Take a look at votes in the House and the Senate. In the Senate, we have Republicans who are voting how they want to or how they think their districts would vote — even if it goes against what Senate leadership wants. That’s the way lawmaking should be. We may lose some votes, but that’s the way it goes. Everyone can go back to their districts and genuinely explain why they voted the way they did.
“But take a look at the House votes. They’re always in line with what leadership wants. You think every single House Republican really agrees with the speaker on every bill he wants passed? Funny how that works.”
The big issue is that Gunn is playing hardball with the $1.8 billion in federal stimulus money Mississippi has received, refusing to agree to spend most of it unless the Senate gets on board with his bill to eliminate the state income tax. The more cautious Senate is unwilling to go nearly as far as Gunn wants.
If this stalemate continues, it will be interesting to see if Gunn and the House Republicans stick to their promise. It’s happened before — the decision not to expand Medicaid costs the state about $1 billion a year.
A smaller issue, but potentially explosive one day, is the question of whether the House Republican caucus meetings should be open to the public. Gunn’s spokesmen contend that the Republican caucus is not a public body and is not subject to the Open Meetings Act.
However, if all 77 House Republicans attend a meeting, that’s a quorum of the House. Imagine what would happen if a majority of county supervisors or city council members from the same party met privately to discuss budget cuts.
The executive director of the Mississippi Ethics Commission cited a 2017 state Supreme Court ruling that said a meeting should be open when a quorum of a public body — a majority — discusses a matter under its authority.
It is telling that, according to Mississippi Today, Hosemann decided not to have Senate Republican caucus meetings when he took office in 2020 because his staff advised him the sessions could violate the Open Meetings Act.
It’s just one more example of different leadership philosophies at the state Capitol. We’ll see whose style wins out when it’s time for a vote to distribute that $1.8 billion.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
