MS Senate passes HB 1020, as clock ticks for House to do the same before end of session

With lawmakers indicating that there may just be hours left in the 2023 legislative session, a number of key pieces of legislation are still outstanding, including one of the most controversial bills still in consideration.

On Wednesday night, House Bill 1020 appeared to be on the legislative equivalent of the one-yard line, but it seems friction between the House and Senate may help the bill's opponents to mount a goal line stand against the bill to overhaul Jackson's court system and law enforcement.

Six members of both chambers, who make up a conference committee, signed on to the latest version of the bill Wednesday night, but the House then left Thursday afternoon without taking up that conference report. It won't return until 10 a.m. Friday, the day many representatives expect the House to end its work for the session.

The Senate took up the bill again around 4 p.m., passing it and an accompanying Senate bill after about two hours of debate, which included significant pushback from the Democratic senators from Jackson who again connected the bill to the state's history on race.

Jackson Sen. John Horhn, who has repeatedly spoken out against HB 1020, rose to the podium Thursday to do so again.

"I will not be long, because I am tired. This has been the most tiring legislative session I've had in the 31 years I've been down here. It's been also one of the most disappointing sessions that I've had when I look at the kind of toxic legislation that's being directed towards me, and when I say me I mean the people that I represent," Horhn said.

The House leaving Thursday without bringing up the bill, which has dominated headlines for much of the session, surprised many in the Senate, including Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, who authored much of the Senate version and served on the conference committee. Wiggins could not say Thursday afternoon whether the bill would make it across the goal line, after learning that the House had adjourned.

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"I don't know, the House went home, so we'll see," Wiggins said after leaving a mostly empty House chamber. "You can blame the House on that ... The Senate is ready to go. We're teed up, ready to go, and the House decided to adjourn for the day, without even doing 1020 or whatever."

Wiggins has been involved in discussions with the House author Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, for weeks. After the Senate passed the bill Wiggins said he had spoken with Lamar again.

"We'll see what the House does. He indicated to me they're going to bring it up," Wiggins said Thursday night.

Lamar did not respond to requests for comment.

The latest version of the bill made a number of changes, including in relation to the jurisdiction of Capitol Police. It and a separate Senate Bill that also remains alive would extend Capitol Police to the entire city of Jackson, as it did in previous versions, but would stipulate that Capitol Police have primary jurisdiction in an expanded Capitol Complex Improvement District and Jackson Police Department would have primary jurisdiction outside of that area.

Another change was to the borders of the expanded CCID. Rather than stretching to County Line Road to include more affluent areas in Northeast Jackson, the most recent version would set that border at Northside Drive and include new areas south of Jackson State University. It also pushed back that expansion to July 1, 2024, rather than 2023, in order to give the Department of Public Safety more time to set policies, including potentially resolving issues with JPD over the 911 call system.

Wiggins said these were two of a number of changes made in response to public feedback and comments from local leaders.

"I will add, as somebody pointed out to me in their observations, it sounds like that we have listened to the people and the conference report reflects what people have asked for, and I would definitely say that's the case, and that's including across both sides of the political equation," Wiggins said.

The latest version would keep aspects of both the House and Senate versions as it relates to the court system. It would create a state-appointed inferior court system within the CCID and add more temporary state-appointed judges within the existing Hinds County court system. The new CCID court would have a repeal date of July 1, 2027, but the legislature regularly pushes back such dates as they approach.

If the bill were to not be taken up by the House before sine die, when session ends, it would be a major victory for Democratic members of the Jackson delegation and local officials, including Jackson's mayor and city council, who have opposed HB 1020 every step of the way.

Wiggins' assurances that changes were made in part after listening to the Jackson delegation did little to change their view of the bill. Sens. Barbara Blackmon, David Blount and Horhn, all Jackson Democrats, spoke against the bill. By the time Blount rose to speak, most of the chambers Republican members had left the room, a point which Blount referenced.

"If you have been in Jackson the last couple of months you know I've never had anybody talk to me more in the 16 years I've been here (than) about this bill. I've had people come up to me at church, at the grocery store, and say tell me about House Bill 1020. And to the people who are in this room, and to all the people who have earned the right to sit in these empty chairs right now, I would say to you this gives you a feeling of the wrongness created by this bill," Blount said.

Blount said the bill goes far beyond what was intended for the CCID when it was created six years ago. He says it was meant to raise sales tax revenue to help with infrastructure in parts of the city with high amounts of state-owned properties, which don't pay property taxes.

"The Capitol Complex Improvement District is a street paving program, and as a street paving program it has been successful. It is not a judicial district. It is not a city within the city. It is not a place for people in some neighborhoods to get one kind of justice, and people in other neighborhoods in the city don't. It is a street paving program, and anyone who tells you or sees it as a vehicle for anything more than that is wrong and does not understand the legislative intent behind it," Blount said.

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Horhn, the longtime Jackson senator said that this session is the culmination of decades of deteriorating relations between the city and state.

"I think that we've been headed this way for a long time in Mississippi. We've been headed this way, really, ever since the political landscape of Jackson changed back in the mid-80s, and it's gotten progressively more toxic and more strident and more antagonistic when we look at the relationship between our capital city and the rest of the state," Horhn said. "It's almost as if folks resent Jackson. Resent it for the changes that have occurred in the city, politically, economically, socially, racially."

Horhn said the legislature set Jackson up to fail, and now they are stepping in and saying their way is the only way to move forward.

"It's almost as if we are doing everything that we can to ensure that it fails and gets flushed down the Pearl River," Horhn said. "You walk away from our capital city, and then when things get bad you come back to that capital city and you say, 'This is how it's going to be.'"

Horhn closed by saying that this vote would only hurt Mississippi's national reputation on racial issues.

"The motives, the intentions, the aspirations, the desire that some of the leadership in this body and in the other end, I'm not questioning. I think you want to help Jackson. But why don't you ask me, what do we need? I think you want to provide ways of dealing with this, but the way this looks says something else, and it plays right into the old stereotypical notions the rest of the country has about Mississippi," Horhn said. "Well, guess what? Maybe they're not stereotypes. Maybe it's just the way we are."

As Blackmon rose to speak against the bill she may have done so as her final speech before the body. After serving more than two decades in the Senate, with her service split by a roughly 12-year gap, Blackmon is retiring at the end of session. She compared the bill to the legislation that the state passed following Reconstruction to limit the rights of its Black citizens.

"The Black Codes were enacted after Reconstruction, when we thought we were free, and somehow some way the legislature found a way to institute some codes to keep us in bondage," Blackmon said. "We were free, and all of the Black Codes and all of those Jim Crow laws put us back in our place. We're being told, right now, in the 21st Century, your place is still where it was after Reconstruction."

Wiggins defended the bill as an attempt to do nothing but help the people of Jackson. He recalled a story of two women who visited the capital from out of state, stayed at a downtown hotel and later told him that they were scared to walk the few blocks to the capitol building. He then had members of the Senate who have been victims of crime in Jackson raise their hands.

"We invite people to our great state, and to our great capital, and that's the image they walk away from," Wiggins said. "We cannot let it continue."

Wiggins said he respects Blackmon, but that "she's mighty good at getting the headlines."

"We have to stop the divisive race baiting that goes on when all we're trying to do is help our fellow Mississippians," Wiggins said.

Wiggins said there is a "real story" that national media don't tell about Mississippi, which includes helping each other after natural disasters like the recent tornadoes and like what he experienced when Hurricane Katrina brought significant damage and loss of life to his district. He also said there are many things that Jackson should be proud of, including a civil rights museum which he said the legislature helped pay for.

Outside of HB 1020, the legislature also seems to be at an impasse over a number of budget bills, including how to fund public education. When the chambers adjourned Wednesday, Speaker of the House Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said an agreement had been reached. Reports flowed in that the agreement would include a roughly $100 million increase in state education funding, which would be less than what Hosemann and Senate leaders had sought, but more than the House position.

By Thursday morning, though, things seemed less clear. The education budget was skipped on both chambers' calendars, and with the House leaving for the day it will not see a vote there until Friday at the earliest. Before adjournment, Gunn told members to have their reports completed by 8 p.m. so they could be voted on in the morning.

One budget bill that did pass was funding for DPS, which included funds to purchase body cameras for Capitol Police. That bill also opened the possibility of DPS allocating money to JPD, if JPD and Capitol Police agree to an operational agreement within the CCID.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: MS Legislature: With time running out, big issues hang in the balance