The Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday from attorneys for Gov. Haley Barbour and the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi about how funding brought in from a tobacco lawsuit will be appropriated.The Partnership is appealing the December ruling of a Jackson County judge that said only the legislature could appropriate money to the Partnership.
Graduate student Nick Wilson said the Partnership was created after Mississippi’s 1997 settlement with the tobacco industry.
“We had, at the time, the largest tobacco settlement,” Wilson said. “It was not a class-action suit in conjunction with other states. Mississippi went on its own.”
The attorney general at the time, Mike Moore, filed the suit and won the state $4.1 billion in the settlement. Moore currently serves as chairman of the board for the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi.
In December 2000, Moore obtained an order from Chancery Judge Jaye Bradley, which directed $20 million from the annual settlement payments to the Partnership.
The present debate is whether that ruling was legal according to the Mississippi Constitution, Wilson said.
“In Mississippi, there are two ways to appropriate funds,” Wilson said. “The first allows the legislature to appropriate funds every year based on what is put into the general budget. The second way is for the legislature to allow for certain money to not be put into the general budget every year, and this money can be directed to a specific program. This way the legislature does not have to appropriate those funds every year.”
Barbour’s office now wants the funds that were being diverted to the Partnership to go back into the general budget, so they can be appropriated by the legislature.
As reported in The Sun-Herald, John Corlew, representing Barbour, said the money from the settlement was meant to be the property of Mississippi, and only the legislature can appropriate state money.
Corlew said that the 2000 ruling granting the funds to the Partnership was “the most blatant diversion of public funds to a private corporation in the history of the state of Mississippi.”
According to an article in the Herald, Partnership attorney Jim Craig said the organization’s money does not come from taxes or fees collected by the state.
“They are not subject to the appropriations process,” Craig said.
The final decision on the case is expected to be delivered in September.