MS House ‘drew the line in the sand’ on DMR budget. Impasse stalls Coast projects.
A host of tidelands and environmental projects are on hold and pay will run out Aug. 31 for 175 employees at the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources because members of the House of Representatives question how the DMR and Gov. Tate Reeves plan to spend millions in federal funds, state Rep. John Read, R-Gautier says.
Legislators have in the past questioned spending of federal oil-lease money, called GOMESA funds, that is supposed to be used to improve the environment. In 2019, for example, Gov. Phil Bryant announced that almost $7 million would go for a tramway connecting the Gulfport harbor and Mississippi Aquarium. The project was later killed, but the aquarium is set to receive $8 million for conservation and education programs.
Read, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said members want to make sure GOMESA funding is going to restore and conserve Coast waterways and resources, as it is intended to do.
The DMR is set to receive about $41.5 million in GOMESA funding for the three Coast counties, but the project list is still being developed. The deadline for project applications was June 30.
“If it was your billfold, would you pass out money without knowing what somebody was going to spend it on?” asked Read, who is on the House-Senate conference committee trying to resolve the dispute.
“That’s where the line was drawn. You show the projects and we will appropriate and everything will be OK. We just felt that the proper thing would be to see the projects and we will fund them, unless there’s something that could be questionable.
“We drew the line in the sand.”
The Senate is ready to sign off on the budget without “micromanaging” the GOMESA projects, Sen. Brice Wiggins said, which he believes the House is trying to do.
Joe Spraggins, DMR’s executive director, said the attorney general’s office reviews GOMESA projects for compliance with federal guidelines, then a scientific review team at DMR looks over the projects.
Then a committee of three state agencies — DMR, the Mississippi Development Authority and Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality — recommends a list of projects to the governor, who has final say. The project list is still being developed, Spraggins said.
Wiggins said he believes Gov. Tate Reeves will be a responsible steward of the funds.
No date has been set for the Legislature to return so that a budget can be approved and adopted. Legislators reached an impasse on the DMR budget and left the Capitol earlier this month.
Without a budget, DMR had to furlough 147 employees for five days in early July before Reeves arranged a workaround to bring them back. DMR might have to initiate new furloughs Sept. 1 unless the Legislature approves a budget before then.
The DMR provided the Sun Herald with a list of dozens of ongoing Tidelands and GOMESA projects put on hold because DMR has not been authorized to spend money already provided and dedicated to those projects. Mothballing projects is in some cases costing extra money, as will restarting them.
“Other projects will delay public access and water quality issues the projects are designed to address,” said a DMR response to questions the Sun Herald was asked to submit in writing.
The answers were sent to Reeves’ office for review before the Sun Herald received the responses.
Reeves’ power over DMR grew after the Legislature this year voted to turn the agency’s board, the Commission on Marine Resources, from a governing to an advisory body. Essentially, Spraggins and Reeves now make agency decisions with CMR input.
Even before this change, the governor had final say over GOMESA projects.
In addition to new GOMESA funding, the DMR is unable to spend $27.8 million for ongoing projects.
Ongoing GOMESA projects that have been stalled include erosion control on Jackson County’s Front Beach, boardwalk construction, water quality improvements, work at Buccaneer State Park, and sea oat and sand dune additions.
Tidelands projects on hold include construction of piers and other public access points to waterways, upgrades at Shepard State Park in Gautier and the Bert Jones Yacht Basin in Gulfport, improvements to boat launches and harbors, enhancement and monitoring of fish stock, and even a robotics oyster production program at Gulfport High School.
The stalled budget is also holding up a DMR scientific study of a Louisiana project that could harm the Coast’s estuarine environment: a proposal to divert Mississippi River water through the mid-Breton Sound into surrounding waterways, including the Mississippi Sound.
