Mississippi House Speaker Jason White outlined on Monday a list of priorities he will aim to advance during the 2026 legislative session, a policy agenda whose viability will depend on negotiations with the state Senate and the impact of federal legislation moving through Congress.
In broad terms, these policies will focus on reshaping the state’s K-12 education system, addressing financial challenges facing Mississippi’s pension system for state workers, expanding voting rights and addressing infrastructure challenges facing the capital city of Jackson.
Days after White announced the formation of three new select committees to study key policy areas ahead of the 2026 session, White spoke Monday to the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government and Capitol Press Corps.
White offered more specifics on the legislative strategy he plans to push next year after a 2025 legislative session shaped by Republican infighting, historic tax reforms and uncertainty at the federal level.
House will propose ‘school choice/education freedom’ package
The House will propose one sprawling education reform package containing many of the “school choice” provisions that died last session, White said.
This is a departure from the piecemeal strategy House Republicans undertook last session, where the chamber passed a series of standalone education bills. Many of the House’s bills either died in the Senate or, in the case of a proposal that would have allowed some Mississippi parents to use taxpayer money to pay for private schools, didn’t come up for a vote on the House floor.
The new approach is modeled after the sweeping tax reform package that the Legislature passed last session and the “Big Beautiful Bill” moving through the Republican-controlled Congress.
“I think it’s why you see even in our national Congress now considering that one huge bill because in the volatile political world that we live in, there are things in there that folks for whatever reason, because of a certain voter base or political ideology, they say they can’t go there, but there are enough good things (in the bill) that they’re able to get there,” White said.
The congressional measure, which was being debated Monday in the United States Senate, could itself alter public education funding in states around the country.
Next session, White said the House will introduce a “comprehensive” package containing all of its key priorities, which include lifting restrictions on public school transfers, closing and consolidating some schools, and allowing Mississippi children being home-schooled to play public school sports.
White also said he wants to focus on social factors, such as poverty, that may hinder academic performance.
“It’s going to be comprehensive, it’ll be bold and it’ll be uncomfortable,” White said. “It’ll be uncomfortable for me, it’ll be uncomfortable for people in my own caucus, and for people on the other side of the aisle. But it can absolutely alter the (education) landscape.”
White said he is a proponent of “universal school choice,” which often refers to policies that allow all households — regardless of income level — to use public education dollars to send their children to private schools or other institutions of their choice, rather than being assigned to public schools based on where they live.
But White acknowledged on Monday that there haven’t been enough votes in his chamber to advance such a measure, a political reality he traced back to the racial politics of education in Mississippi. Following the Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s, many private schools in Mississippi opened as bulwarks against racial integration.
White, who favors the term “education freedom” instead of the “school choice” moniker embraced by most conservative education groups, said the new Education Freedom Select Committee will examine education policies passed by many other Republican-controlled legislatures nationwide.
Finding a “dedicated revenue stream” for PERS
White said the House will try again to pass legislation with a “dedicated revenue stream” for the Public Employees’ Retirement System, or PERS, which currently faces an over $25 billion unfunded liability.
White said his House Republican Caucus still favors either diverting most of the state’s lottery proceeds to PERS or legalizing mobile sports betting and using the revenue to help make the pension system solvent. These proposals will be the subject of another House select committee.
The Senate has favored a “hybrid” retirement plan to shore up the system financially by cutting benefits for future employees.
Voter Rights
The House will again aim to implement early voting in Mississippi, which is one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.
Senate leaders, on the last day of their regular 2025 session, decided not to send a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would have expanded pre-Election Day voting options. The governor has been vocally opposed to early voting in Mississippi and would likely have vetoed the measure.
A House Voters’ Rights Select Committee will examine paths forward for restoring suffrage for individuals convicted of crimes who have completed their sentences. The committee will also explore re-establishing a ballot initiative process, an effort that has failed for several years in a row after the previous initiative process was struck down by the state Supreme Court.
In the Senate, such a measure would have to go through the Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency committee, where last session it died under the leadership of Republican chairman Sen. David Parker.
Parker is not running for reelection, a development that bodes well for restoring the ballot initiative process, White said Monday, without naming Parker.
Jackson-related bills and local projects
The Capital and Metro Revitalization Select Committee, established in 2024, will continue to focus on local governance issues in the capital city of Jackson after helping pass five bills into law last session.
In 2026, White said, the House will focus on addressing infrastructure woes plaguing Jackson’s water and sewer systems. White said the state would not aim to “take over” the systems, a concern often voiced by Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, about the majority-white, Republican-controlled Legislature usurping local rule in Jackson.
Last session, a source of Republican infighting between the House and Senate concerned whether to pass a “Christmas Tree” bill, or a bill that appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars in local projects around the state. To the House’s chagrin, that never happened, and White said he remains “disappointed” in the Senate leadership over the disagreement.
“We should have funded local projects, and we didn’t because of politics and nothing else,” White said.
White said he heard the Senate might introduce a local projects bill in January next session, earlier than normal, but he remains concerned the chambers are far from reaching an agreement.
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