RELEASE from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy:
2017 Legislative Recap
Highlights from the Mississippi Legislature’s Regular Session
The MCPP 2017 Legislative Recap is a summary of most of the significant bills and issues addressed (or not) during the 2017 Regular Session, which began on January 3 and ended on March 29. Several important bills, such as those regarding school funding and road construction, did not pass and will likely come up again in 2018.
Almost all of the laws passed during the 2017 Regular Session will go into effect July 1, 2017.
MCPP’s top priority for 2017 was a major welfare-to-work bill, which was signed into law (see HB 1090, the first item in the summary). We also worked on bills to reduce the regulatory burden on entrepreneurs, a major one which passed and others which made surprising progress in their first year to be considered. In addition we continued our efforts to revise the graduation test in U.S. History to include the nation’s founding.
As always, we assisted lawmakers on numerous bills by analyzing them based on the principles in our Governing by Principle booklet. We also suggested amendments to bills that could be improved and, in one of our more important roles, encouraged the killing of bills that were inconsistent with those principles.
On June 5th, the Legislature convened a Special Session called by Governor Bryant to pass the appropriations bills and other budget matters that had not passed during the 2017 Regular Session. Those bills are not included in this summary.
6/16/17
Magnolia Tribune
