After both chambers gaveled in, the House voted 110-0 to reject the governor’s partial veto of opioid settlement grants. Members also reapproved a bill creating a low-interest loan program for Gulf Coast restoration projects. Lastly, they sent the Senate a measure meant to keep parts of state law on youth courts from expiring after a broader reform bill died late in the session. But none of those efforts made it through the upper chamber.
Nearly all Senate Democrats joined some Republicans to sustain Reeves’ veto of the opioid funding and reject the youth court resolution.
Senate Minority Leader Derrick Simmons said the caucus pulled its support for all override efforts after Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann declined to take up Reeves’ veto of a bill that would have given lawmakers oversight of spending tied to a federally funded rural health program.
“We got so many calls from our hospitals, and because we could not take that bill up first, our position was there’s no need for us to be here,” Simmons said.
Hosemann declined to speak with reporters after the Senate gaveled out.
House Speaker Jason White blamed the breakdown in part on Reeves applying political pressure on the Senate in the days before lawmakers returned.
“The governor does what he does and enacted his politics into the Senate, I guess, to sway those folks who had voted for those bills to now not vote to override him,” White said. “Certainly, that’s his prerogative. He’s way better at that political game than I am.”
White was especially critical of the Senate’s failure to revisit the rural health oversight bill. He said the guardrails it put in place were reasonable, and disputed Reeves’ claim that the bill would put up to $1 billion in federal funding at risk.
“He’s well within his rights to lobby members not to override his veto there, but to say it would have in any way impeded or hindered or caused us to miss out on money, that was just never going to happen," White said.
Sen. Brice Wiggins said the failure of the youth court measure could leave judges and courts without clear operational standards.
“That can be 82 different interpretations,” Wiggins said. “We don’t need that. We need a consistent law across the state.”
Wiggins and other lawmakers said without an extension of those youth court statutes, the Mississippi Supreme Court will likely have to bridge the legal gap with temporary orders.
