The Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday voted to provide $20 million to fund the Mississippi Emergency Management Association’s initial winter storm Fern response and recovery efforts.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders want to provide the money post-haste as communities still reel from the ice storm that hammered Mississippi. These expenses, including millions already incurred, include deploying the National Guard and MEMA’s initial operations.
But House leaders do not appear to be onboard with the legislation, which Hosemann said the Senate plans to pass on to them as early as Tuesday. House Speaker Jason White on Monday said he has not had any communication with Hosemann, and that House leaders are still trying to determine the best way to help local communities with state resources.
Scott Simmons, MEMA’s director of external affairs, told Mississippi Today that if the Legislature allocates more money to the state agency to help with weather recovery efforts, it would be a “substantial improvement in our ability to respond to natural disasters.”
The Senate measure would direct money to MEMA, and would not provide individual assistance for Mississippians impacted by the storm.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, and Hosemann told reporters that the bill would prevent state agencies from running into a cash crunch while responding to the storm and signal to them that the Legislature is supporting their efforts.
“We want to be ahead of the game,” Hopson said. “We want to make sure that we’re ready to go and there’s not going to be any problems getting funds out to where they need to.”
Hosemann said MEMA estimated that it faces around $18 million to $24 million in initial expenses from storm response, which is how the Senate leadership landed on the $20 million figure in the legislation.
Hosemann said this $20 million would be a stopgap, and would not include the expected 25% match the state will likely have to come up with to match Federal Emergency Management Agency spending, or other expenses the state and local governments will most likely face.
Overall, Hosemann said, “We’re not talking about a $50-million event here. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Hosemann indicated to reporters that Senate leaders had communicated with the House on the plan for sending the $20 million to MEMA.
But Hosemann’s fellow Republican Speaker White on Monday afternoon said Senate leadership has not communicated with the House “at all,” though White said House Speaker Pro Tempore Manly Barton heard “in passing” that the Senate was working on some type of weather recovery legislation.
“We have heard lots of big rumors, but I have not communicated with the lieutenant governor at all,” White said after the Senate committee had approved the spending. “Our House members are focused on coming up with aid for these communities and trying to figure out what that should look like.”
White said he wants the state to focus its resources on the needs of local communities’ recovery.
“I haven’t heard a word from MEMA about what might be needed right now,” White added. “I am hearing hourly from my House members in the affected areas, and from local leaders.”
How the Legislature and the state government continue to respond to the worst winter storm that Mississippi has faced in a generation will have major consequences.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves reported on Sunday that at least 23 people have died because of the storm, and 337 homes and 24 businesses sustained damage. According to poweroutage.us, 44,485 customers in the state remain without power over a week after the storm.
Hosemann and Hopson said the Senate will roll out additional measures later in the session to assist local communities impacted by the storm, but they did not offer specifics.
“We’ve got to remember there are still people cold,” Hosemann said. “There’s a lot of people — tens of thousands of people — that don’t have electricity today. We’ve already had lives lost in this, and we’re trying to make sure there aren’t further ones lost.”
Hosemann praised the work the state National Guard has been doing in areas hit by the storm. Asked whether he agreed with some people’s criticism that the Guard and other resources should have been deployed sooner, Hosemann said, “I don’t know about that.”
Politics and government editor Geoff Pender contributed to this story.
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