Lawmakers are gearing up for the Fall 2018 Joint Legislative Budget committee meeting. The hearings will take place Monday, September 17th and will mark the start of the extensive process of writing a state budget.
All state agencies have submitted their budget requests for 2020, but this year the 14 member committee will only be hearing from six agencies.
Representative Scott Bounds will be serving for the first time on the Joint Legislative Budget Committee and said that the process has been distilled from having three weeks of meetings to hear from every agency in state government down to a single day.
“It’s a process of getting the information, gathering the information, then analyzing the information, making a comparative analysis with the current fiscal year we are in, of course [taking into consideration] the needs and the requests,” Bounds said.
Six agencies will be heard from and they are the Public Employees Retirement System, The Mississippi Department of Corrections, The Mississippi Department of Education, The Department of Public Safety, The Mississippi Division of Medicaid, and Child Protection Services.
While other state agencies ranging from the Department of Health to the Department of Environmental Quality, along with various colleges and universities throughout the state will not have hearings, each agency has submitted budget requests to the Mississippi Legislative Budget Office for consideration.
