Aid for Mississippi survivors of Winter Storm Fern is uncertain after Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed a bill, as he accused the Mississippi Senate of unconstitutionally changing a word that would have affected loan interest rates to local governments.
In a Monday veto message for Senate Bill 2632, the governor accused the Senate clerk’s office of correcting language in the bill after the Legislature sent it to the governor without first garnering approval from both chambers.
“The plainly unconstitutional (and possibly criminal) act of the person or persons that attempted to surreptitiously change a material (and negotiated) term of Senate Bill 2632 is unconscionable and calls into question the validity of every bill that I have signed into law this session,” Reeves wrote on Monday. “Have any other material changes been made to any other bill(s) after they have been enrolled and signed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House in the hopes that I would sign them and be none the wiser?”
S.B. 2632 offers loans to local governments to help pay for damages and recovery from Winter Storm Fern in January. The bill originally included a provision that loans would be charged 1% interest monthly. Reeves said in his veto message that the interest rate was negotiated directly by his staff in consultation with House Appropriations C Committee Chairman Rep. Clay Deweese, R-Oxford, and Sen. Scott DeLano, R-Biloxi, and that the specified interest rate was included in two drafts of the bill’s conference report presented to him.
Reeves accused Deweese of moving for unanimous consent in the House to remove the word “monthly” from the line dictating the interest rate, meaning the interest rate for loan recipients would be 1% annually. The governor alleged that the House approved the representative’s request on March 17 after the Legislature had presented the bill to him for a signature.
Similarly, Reeves accused Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, of making a motion to remove the word “monthly” in S.B. 2632 on the Senate floor later on March 17. But Bryan was not discussing S.B. 2632 that day; he was talking about House Bill 895, a medical-cannabis bill.
Instead, it was Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Tyler McCaughn, R-Newton, who made the motion for unanimous consent from the Senate to remove the word “monthly” from S.B. 2632 on March 13, a day after the Senate adopted the conference report. The Senate agreed to his request that day and both Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White signed the enrolled bill on March 16 before sending it to the governor.
Hosemann said Tuesday that the removal of the word “monthly” was intentional. The House and Senate both unanimously agreed to remove the word “monthly” so that local governments would not have a burdensome 12% annual interest rate on the loans.
The governor’s message is “inaccurate,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said when speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning.
“Attacking and accusing a Senate staffer of committing a criminal act in a Veto message is malicious, unnecessary and false,” the Senate president said on Tuesday. “Notably, without striking the word ‘monthly,’ the language would have resulted in a 12% interest rate charge to cities and counties rather than the clearly intended and unanimously adopted 1% rate.”
McCaughn criticized Reeves’ veto message on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning, saying it “really, really bothers my soul” that the sitting governor could make these accusations without any legal or professional repercussions.
“I am not Hob Bryan,” he said as a couple of senators lightly chuckled. “I think that’s pretty easy to say. But I have respect for him. I have respect for each one of you, or else I wouldn’t be here today. And in no way, in no how at the end of this message is that proper or right.”
McCaughn said he trusted Sen. Delano, who sponsored S.B. 2632, and Rep. Deweese, and he asked that senators extend their trust to the trio as well while they move forward with legislative efforts to aid in the recovery of Winter Storm Fern.
“I believe that it should be known that we’re not done. We are not going to turn our back on the people of Mississippi, we’re not going to turn our back on the people who are struggling and we’re not going to turn our back on our friends and family,” McCaughn said, concluding his speech. Senators gave him a standing ovation.
He made a motion to refer the bill back to the Senate State Affairs Committee that it had originated in at the start of the legislative session. The Legislature could decide to usurp the governor’s veto by having at least a two-thirds majority vote on the bill from both chambers.