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Attorney General Jim Hood’s recent run of bad luck with the Mississippi Supreme Court continued Thursday afternoon.

The court ruled against Hood in separate fees cases related to litigation involving MCI and Microsoft.

In both instances, the court found that the law requires that any outside counsel Hood hires must be paid from his contingent fund or from other funds the Legislature appropriates to his office. Both the MCI and Microsoft cases, the court said in a split decision with partial dissents and concurrences in each opinion, failed to meet that standard.

Auditor Stacey Pickering had sued to reroute the fees payments for outside counsel through the legislative appropriations process.

This is a big win for Pickering, and yet another bad loss for Hood right on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling against him on the pardons issue.

The links to Thursday’s opinions are here and here.

UPDATE: Pickering and Gov. Phil Bryant have issued statements. Pickering’s provides a lot of background, but here’s the pertinent part:

“The Supreme Court agreed that the Mississippi Statute uses the mandatory term ‘shall,’ and we view this mandate as declaratory that all fees paid through contingency fee contracts are public funds and must be appropriated by the Mississippi Legislature. These rulings today are a victory for open government and transparency as well as for the taxpayers of Mississippi.

“These opinions set a clear precedent in Mississippi ensuring that the purse strings of the State of Mississippi are to be controlled by the Mississippi Legislature. These funds are public funds, subject not only to control by the Legislature but also subject to audit by the State Auditor’s Office. I appreciate my predecessor Governor Bryant for his leadership on this issue when it began in 2007, and I am overwhelming pleased with today’s action by the Mississippi Supreme Court.”

And here’s what Bryant, who Pickering noted initiated the original litigation, had to say:

“The money attorneys received for pursuing the MCI case on behalf of the state is public funds, something I have long believed and fought for. The State Supreme Court’s ruling is a welcome sign as we open up this age old process of hiring outside counsel and then paying them excessive amounts of money, in this case $14 million. 

While serving as State Auditor we published a report which looked into the process of paying attorney fees. The report clearly states the Attorney General did not have the authority to enter into such an agreement, because he may only pay private attorneys out of contingency funds in his budget or from other funds appropriated to the office of the Attorney General by the Legislature. I appreciate the work of State Auditor Stacey Pickering in the recovery of these public funds.”

I have a message into Hood’s spokesperson. If/when I get a response, I’ll post it.

SECOND UPDATE: Hood’s statement, in its entirety:

“These opinions by the Supreme Court simply give us direction on how to pay the attorneys that worked on these cases and in future cases. 

“We will implement and follow the law created by the Court.  In this ruling, the Court does not call into question the “validity of the Retention agreement” or the right to the attorneys being paid.  It simply says that the lawyers in these cases could not be paid directly from the defendants, and that money must flow through a state account first. In fact, the Court reiterated the Attorney General’s ability to hire good lawyers to bring important suits on behalf of Mississippi, such as with these cases. 

“The defendants made a claim in Circuit Court that they had negotiated a fee that was $3 million less than that to which they were entitled under the uncontested terms of the contract. On remand, the state will be exposed to payment of that additional $3 million.”

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann would like the Department of Justice employee who called Mississippi’s pursuit of a voter ID statute “disgusting and shameful” removed from any involvement in the state’s application to implement the new law.

Stefanie Gyamfi, who works in DOJ’s Voting Rights Division, made the comments on Facebook. Hosemann said at a press conference Tuesday morning that he became aware of them last week.

“I’m tired of people who don’t live in Mississippi stereotyping us,” Hosemann said.

Federal law requires a state seeking approval from DOJ on matters like the implementation of a voter ID law be treated with impartiality, something Hosemann said he’s afraid “isn’t happening here.”

Mississippi’s voter ID law must meet Section 5 of 1965’s Voting Rights Act. That section requires preclearance of any new voting law in states of covered jurisdiction. DOJ has recently rejected voter ID applications from South Carolina and Texas. Hosemann said Mississippi crafted its bill with that in mind. For example, he said, Texas and South Carolina’s law did not provide free IDs to anybody who needed one. Mississippi’s does.

Mississippi’s application process has already started. Attorney General Jim Hood submitted the preliminary paperwork in January, and DOJ responded in March. The next big step will come after Gov. Phil Bryant signs the bill enacting voter ID, which was passed this session in response to last fall’s ballot initiative. The bill will be made a part of the state’s application.

If Hosemann is convinced strongly enough that Mississippi won’t get a fair shake from DOJ, litigating the state’s application in front of a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia is an option. Hosemann said he’s already considering doing that.

Numbers from the Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association show that American craft beer exports nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011.

Last year, craft beer makers in the U.S. exported  more than 110,000 barrels, up 86 percent from 2010.

Exports have gone up all nine years the BA has collected data.

That’s important to Mississippi, what with our new raised alcohol-by-weight law taking effect July 1. (Legislation Gov. Phil Bryant signed in early April will raise the cap from 5 percent ABW to 8 percent ABW.) The state’s lone existing brewery, Lazy Magnolia in Hancock County, told the Mississippi Business Journal last year an 8 percent ABW law would bump their revenues an estimated 25 percent annually.

And in the Jackson area, the folks at Lucky Town Brewery have just completed gathering seed money to begin brewing their beer on a small scale with the hopes of eventually opening a full-blown brewery. The hope is that microbreweries will begin to take hold in some of the state’s more touristy areas — the Coast, the Delta and the college towns.

This is a good example of a small business-driven market that has a lot of growing left to do. Mississippi seems to have jumped into the game in the nick of time.

For the full report from the BA, click here.

The House bill that would enact several layers of illegal immigration reform, including requiring state and local law enforcement agencies to take a more active role in preventing it, faces a Tuesday deadline to make it out of the Senate Judiciary B Committee.

It doesn’t sound like it will.

Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, chairman of Jud B, said at Monday’s meeting of the Stennis Capitol Press Corps that the bill, House Bill 488, tries to solve a problem best handled by the federal government.

“It appears to instruct police and sheriff’s deputies on how to do their job,” Bryan said. “I agree illegal immigration is a serious problem, but I also think it’s a federal issue.”

Bryan would not say if he would bring the bill up in his committee Tuesday — and believe me, I tried to get him to say one way or the other — but it sounds like he will not. “Given what’s on the (federal) books, is this an efficient way to deal with the problem? I question whether this particular remedy is the best way to handle it.”

Several business groups and law enforcement organizations have signaled their opposition to the bill, which is one of Gov. Phil Bryant’s legislative priorities, saying it acts as an unfunded mandate and has the potential to do major harm to small businesses and to the state’s agriculture sector. Farm Bureau has also come out against it.

If it doesn’t make it out of Jud B tomorrow, it won’t be gone for good. It’s already been attached as an amendment to another bill so the issue will stick around at least a little while longer.

One of the two bills that would increase the alcohol-by-weight content in beer from 5 percent to 8 percent has met a major deadline.

Senate Bill 2878 was sent to the House floor by the Ways and Means Committee Tuesday morning. The deadline for committees to report general bills that originated in the opposite chamber is April 3.

House Bill 1422, which is identical to SB 2878, still sits in two Senate committees, Economic Development and Tourism, meaning it has to clear both to reach the floor. Folks with Raise Your Pints seem optimistic that will happen, with good reason: The Senate bill that cleared House Ways and Means Tuesday cleared each of those committees before it made it to the House.

The next deadline one or both of the bills will have to meet is April 11, the last day for floor action on general bills that originated in the opposite chamber.

The best news, though, is that since the bills are identical, it’s likely they will avoid a conference committee, and be sent straight to Gov. Phil Bryant’s desk. Bryant said in January, and has reiterated a few times since, that he isn’t “necessarily opposed” to signing the legislation.

If and when Tuesday the House ABW bill clears one or both of the Senate committees, I’ll update. As they have for the past month or so, though, things are looking good for the craft beer movement.

UPDATE: SB 2878 has cleared the House and has been sent to Gov. Phil Bryant. I’ve emailed his spokesperson to see what Bryant might do with it. When I get a response, I’ll post it.

SECOND UPDATE: Bryant spokesman Mick Bullock just emailed a short statement. It said, “Gov. Bryant will review the measure after it has been transmitted to him by the Legislature.”

Like his predecessor, we probably won’t know what Bryant will do until he actually does it.

The mixed-use development in Northeast Jackson that has been planned for several years took a giant leap Friday afternoon.

Gov. Phil Bryant’s office said in a press release that the state has sold the land where The District at Eastover will sit. It’s the site of the Old Blind School.

This jives with what developers Ted Duckworth and Breck Hines told the MBJ late last year. They hoped to close on the land the early part of this year, complete site prep and environmental work and start construction on the $110 million project by late summer or early fall.

Here’s the full release:

The former campus of the Mississippi School for the Blind in Jackson has a new owner as of today and plans are underway for a mixed-use development on 21 acres.

The land was purchased by District Land Development Company, LLC for $3.3 million, and the site’s redevelopment into “The District at Eastover” is estimated to generate 600 jobs. The project, once fully built-out, has the potential to bring in about $1.9 million annually to the city and about $4.9 million annually to the state.

“This development will bring jobs and services to our capital city,” Gov. Phil Bryant said. “This purchase puts a vacant site to use and has promise for the Jackson metro area.”

In 2010, lawmakers passed a bill that allows the Department of Finance and Administration to seek proposals from developers to build mixed-use developments as well as lease or sell land to developers. This Senate bill was approved when Bryant served as lieutenant governor.

DFA issued a request for proposals (RFP) in September 2010, and The District Land Development Company, LLC, through its manager Duckworth Realty, won the bid. Duckworth Realty is managed by Ted Duckworth and Breck Hines.

The District at Eastover will feature 500,000 square feet of retail, office, hotel, restaurants and residential space. The development will be family oriented, and it maintains the property’s natural assets, such as trees and public green spaces. Retail areas will have cafes and outdoor dining.

“We are pleased to have the opportunity to design a special development that provides our Metropolitan community a pedestrian-friendly environment to shop, dine, live and work,” said Ted Duckworth, the project developer. “The project will benefit from its successful surroundings, as it sits in one of most affluent and densely populated areas in the State.

“We began working on this project in 2006 with the desire to create a special place that further enhances the quality of life for the people of Jackson and supports the growth occurring throughout the metro area. We are excited to now take the next step in that process.”

This price of $3.3 million was based on an average of two appraisals procured by DFA. In accordance with the legislation, $1.2 million of the funds from the sale will be used to build a new storage and building maintenance facility on the grounds of the MS School for the Blind and a new residence for the superintendent of the Mississippi School for the Blind. The balance of the funds will be deposited into a special fund designated as the School for the Blind Trust Fund.

“We believe that this project will spark tremendous economic development opportunities and growth for Jackson and Mississippi,” Kevin J. Upchurch, executive director of the Department of Finance and Administration said.

Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller told a meeting of the Capital Area Bar Association Tuesday that legislation to implement pay raises for trial and appellate judges will be introduced this session, probably sometime next week.

It’s the second session in a row the legislation has arrived at the Capitol. It died last year. Judges haven’t received a raise since 2003.

The measure has already gained the endorsement of a handful of major business groups, including the Mississippi Economic Council and the Gulf Coast Business Council.

Its intent is to get Mississippi judges off the bottom of the pay scale. According to the National Center for State Courts, the southeastern average for trial judge pay is $138,901. In Mississippi, trial judges are paid $104,170. Mississippi Court of Appeals judges are paid $105,050 annually; state Supreme Court judges earn $112,530. Trial and appellate court judges in Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee earn salaries that average about 30 percent more than that. Alabama tops that list, with its supreme court judges pulling in $180,839, and trial judges making $158,134.

Like it would have last year, the legislation will raise judicial salaries incrementally, starting Jan. 1, 2013, and ending on that same date in 2016. By then, associate justices on the Supreme Court would make $152,250 (up from $112,530 now). Circuit and chancery judges salaries would increase from $104,170 now, to $136,000. The bill would also require the State Personnel Board to review judicial salaries on Nov. 1, 2017, and every four years after that. The Legislature, starting in 2019, would set judicial salaries based on the recommendations of the State Personnel Board.

Increases in civil filing and appellate court docket fees would fund the raises. Civil filing fees in circuit court are currently $121. In chancery court, they’re $108. Each would increase $40. Docket fees for the Mississippi Supreme Court would double, from $100 to $200. Under that format, no money from the state’s general fund would be used.

Former ninth district circuit judge Frank Vollor joined Waller on the panel, and said he left the bench after 20 years strictly for economic reasons. He is now in private practice.

“We expect a lot out of our judges, and we need to pay them adequately,” he said.

Debate during the 2011 session included the concern some lawmakers had over the constitutionality of the bill. The state’s Constitution prohibits changes in pay for judges during their terms. Waller said that could be circumvented by giving judges additional duties. This legislation will do that, he said, by requiring members of the Supreme Court and chancery and circuit judges to promote judicial education in schools, drug courts, electronic filing and management systems developed by the Mississippi Administrative Office of Courts.

As chief justice, Waller’s pay is not tied to the section of the Constitution that prohibits changes in pay during judicial terms. The same goes for goes for members of the Court of Appeals.

“This is a small step toward capturing judicial independence,” Waller told the crowd at the Capital Club. “If we don’t capture (revenue generated by filing fees), somebody else will, and it probably won’t be the judiciary.”

Waller said in an interview after the presentation that he expects some opposition at the Capitol, but hopes the fact that user fees would fund the raises would be enough to get it to Gov. Phil Bryant’s desk.

House Judiciary A Chairman Rep. Mark Baker, R-Brandon, has already indicated he supports it. Baker’s counterpart in the Senate, Vicksburg Republican Briggs Hopson, has done the same.

“These are hard times, and I understand that,” Waller told reporters. “There’s a lot of needs. In recognition of that, we’ve chosen a funding model that won’t impact the general fund. We think that’s the fairest way to go about it.”

Other than anecdotes about his family, there wasn’t much new in Gov. Phil Bryant’s inaugural address.

Like he has for most of the past four years, Bryant used his platform to talk economic issues: job-creation, education, the high cost of teenage pregnancy and his political pet project, performance-based budgeting.

The energy and healthcare industries, Bryant said, are two areas ripe for growth over the next decade-plus. The extraction and processing of natural gas, biofuels and clean coal can – and according to Bryant, will – help the state in its revolution from low-wage industrial haven to modern manufacturing empire.

Offering incentives for the healthcare industry, and bringing 1,000 new physicians to Mississippi by 2025, can turn the state’s metro areas and their medical corridors into burgeoning centers of medical power, Bryant said.

Having a stable of workers to fill those jobs will require a shift in thinking when it comes to public education, he said. Solutions don’t begin and end with funding, but will take redesigning curriculums to better serve students not on a college track, but headed for vocational employment, and a clearer path for charter schools to establish.

“When a Mississippian has a job, it changes absolutely everything,” Bryant said.

Bryant saved his strongest words for the state’s high teenage pregnancy rate, which has become as much of a Mississippi hallmark as the state’s musical and literary heritage.

“It must come to an end,” he said, adding that churches and other religious organizations have to partner with public institutions in reaching that end. “We can no longer turn our heads and pretend the problem doesn’t exist.”

Bryant compared the cultural change that would have to happen to do that to the one that has managed to eradicate smoking in nearly every public building and gathering spot in Mississippi, including the Capitol. He noted that a lot of folks 40 years ago would have filled the place with cigarette and cigar smoke during his address.

Obviously, Bryant’s plans will be met with a great deal of resistance in the Capitol, some from within his own party, but mostly from Democrats, who just watched their long-held power and influence all but evaporate.

Bryant’s Smart Budget Act, which bases agency funding on results achieved, is wildly popular with fiscal conservatives, but not with many agency heads, who cite the difficulty in tracking those results, not to mention the ease with which those results can be manipulated.

With a Republican-led Legislature, though, its passage is likely, if not guaranteed. The same goes for Bryant’s education reforms, though it’s worth noting the funding fight is likely to be as spirited as it’s ever been.

The wild card in that notion will be just how badly new legislative leadership – Speaker Phillip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves – want to return Mississippi’s government to one in which lawmakers hold the majority of power.

Either way, the game is afoot.

Gov.-elect Phil Bryant filled out his list of agency appointments Monday afternoon, a few days after he named Jim Barksdale as interim head of the Mississippi Development Authority.

New faces include Mark Henry at the Department of Employment Security, Rickey Berry at Human Services and Dr. David Dzielak at Medicaid. Robert Latham will lead MEMA, though he was the agency’s executive director during Katrina, so he’s not totally new.

The rest of the state agencies kept their current leaders.

Here’s a full list:

Bureau of Narcotics: Marshall L. Fisher

Corrections: Chris Epps

MEMA: Robert Latham

Employment Security: Mark Henry

Environmental Quality: Trudy Fisher

Finance and Administration: Kevin Upchurch

Human Services: Rickey Berry

Medicaid: Dr. David Dzielak

Marine Resources: Dr. Bill Walker

Public Safety: Albert Santa Cruz

Mississippi has a law on the books that is supposed to educate businesses on the effects of new rules and regulations.

An effort to strengthen that law and to establish a commission whose members would include business owners to review new rules will soon be a part of the 2012 legislative session.

According to the federal Office of Advocacy, Mississippi is one of 26 states that already have a partial regulatory flexibility statute, meaning there is already a mechanism in place to alert businesses of how new rules will impact them, and ways rules can be altered after they’re enacted.

Legislation to create a full-blown review of proposed rules before they take effect has cleared the Senate in past sessions and has been on the calendar for floor debate in the House, but has failed to advance.

“It would allow us to look and see if there’s a more flexible way to alter the rules and regulations that come out, to where the intent can still apply without inflicting a (financial) burden,” said Ron Aldridge, director of the Mississippi National Federation of Independent Businesses. The organization has spent several sessions lobbying for a review commission. “That’s what this is about, is to put into law in Mississippi a framework where small business owners can sit on a commission and give feedback to the agencies as the rules are being put into place but before they take effect. The way it works now, if they do harm on the front end, you can alter them later. By then, though, they’ve done their damage.”

Aldridge listed as an example Mississippi’s window tint law, last modified in 2005, in which the Mississippi Department of Public Safety mandated tint darker than a particular shade be inspected, and receive clearance for road use. The process is similar to the one that governs state inspection stickers for vehicles. Law enforcement agencies are allowed to have darker tint on their vehicles than civilians.

“It ended up that these places that did the inspections, it was going to cost them so much to deal with these rules it wasn’t any way they could actually do it,” Aldridge said. “The people who would have been impacted by it never got to sit down with the agency and figure out a way to make it work before the rule was passed.”

Aldridge said a number of rule-making state agencies have opposed the legislation, for the same reasons they opposed the original administrative procedures law passed in 2003 and officially put on the books in 2005. Former secretary of state Eric Clark pushed that legislation, which requires agencies to project what kind of impact new regulations might have on targeted businesses.

“But it doesn’t give any frame of reference for that,” Aldridge said. “In other words, what do they mean when they say small business. This review commission would define that, and it would make agencies more clearly state what the impact would be. Right now, all they have to do is say this has no impact, or little or minimal impact. How do they know? Unless you’ve been in that business yourself, you don’t know. Minimal impact for one person could have an entirely different meaning for another. One size does not fit all. Also, a commission will let us look at what’s already in place and see if there are any modifications to rules that have proven to be harmful that will maintain their purpose but reduce or eliminate the costs associated.”

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Laurel, has sponsored since 2008 legislation that would create a regulatory review commission. He said in an interview last week he plans to do the same this session.

“It’s always good to have honest feedback from business professionals and business owners. They need to know very specifically on the front end what a new rule will mean for them.”

Aldridge and McDaniel are optimistic new House leadership will be amenable to the bill’s passage. Gov. –elect Phil Bryant has already endorsed the idea, and may introduce a bill of his own, according to a press release from his office.

“I think the chances of its passage are greatly improved,” McDaniel said.