If Tate Reeves calls a tax cut special session, Senate has the option to do nothing

An illness is spreading through the Mississippi Capitol: special session fever.

Speculation is rampant that Gov. Tate Reeves will call a special session if the Senate does not acquiesce to his and the House leadership’s wishes to eliminate the state personal income tax.

Reeves and House leaders are fond of claiming that the about 30% of general fund revenue lost by eliminating the income tax can be offset by growth in other state tax revenue.

House leaders can produce fancy charts showing that the average annual 3% growth rate in state revenue collections can more than offset the revenue lost from a phase out of the income tax.

What is lost in the fancy charts is that the historical 3% growth rate in state revenue includes growth in the personal income tax, which is the second largest source of state revenue. Any growth rate will entail much less revenue if it does not include a 3% growth in the income tax, which would be eliminated if the governor and House leaders have their way. This is important because historically speaking, as state revenue grows so does the cost of providing services, from pay to state employees, to health care costs, to transportation costs, to utility costs and so on.

This does not even include the fact that historically speaking, many state entities providing services have been underfunded by the Legislature, ranging from education to health care, to law enforcement, to transportation. Again, the list goes on and on.

And don’t forget a looming $25 billion shortfall in the state’s Public Employee Retirement System that could create chaos at some point.

But should the Senate not agree to the elimination of the income tax and Reeves calls a special session, there will be tremendous pressure on the Senate leadership, particularly Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the chamber’s presiding officer.

Generally speaking, a special session will provide more advantages for the eliminate-the-income-tax crowd.

First off, it will be two against one. When the governor and one chamber of the Legislature are on the same page, it is often more difficult for the other chamber to prevail.

The Mississippi Constitution gives the governor sole authority to call a special session and set an agenda. But the Legislature does have discretion in how that agenda is carried out.

And the Legislature always has the option to do nothing during the special session. Simply adjourn and go home is an option.

But the state constitution also says if one chamber is in session, the other house cannot remain out of session for more than three days.

In other words, theoretically, the House and governor working together could keep the Senate in session all year.

In theory, senators could say they are not going to yield to the governor’s wishes and adjourn the special session. But if the House remained in session, the Senate would have to come back in three days. The Senate could then adjourn again, but be forced to come back if the House stubbornly remained in session.

The process could continue all year.

But in the real world, there does not appear to be a mechanism — constitutionally speaking — to force the Senate to come back. The Mississippi Constitution does say members can be “compelled” to attend a session in order to have a quorum, but many experts say that language would not be relevant to make an entire chamber return to session after members had voted to adjourn.

In the past, one chamber has failed to return to the Capitol and suffered no consequences after the other remained in session for more than three days.

As a side note, the Mississippi Constitution does give the governor the authority to end a special session should the two chambers not agree on adjournment. In the early 2000s, then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove ended a special session when the House and Senate could not agree on a plan to redraw the state’s U.S. House districts to adhere to population shifts found by the U.S. Census.

But would Reeves want to end the special session without approval of his cherished income tax elimination plan?

Probably not.

In 2002 there famously was an 82-day special session to consider proposals to provide businesses more protection from lawsuits. No effort was made to adjourn that session. It just dragged on until the House finally agreed to a significant portion of the Senate plan to provide more lawsuit protection.

In 1969, a special session lasted most of the summer when the Legislature finally agreed to a proposal of then-Gov. John Bell Williams to opt into the federal Medicaid program.

In both those instances, those wanting something passed — Medicaid in the 1960s and lawsuit protections in the 2000s — finally prevailed.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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