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American Craft Beer Week has gotten a congressional boost.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is one of 18 bipartisan sponsors of legislation that would reduce the excise tax on brewers that make up to 6 million barrels of beer per year to $3.50 on the first 60,000 barrels and $16 on additional barrels under 2 million annually.

Small brewers, defined as those that brew fewer than 2 million barrels per year, pay $7 in excise taxes per barrel for the first 60,000 barrels annually.

Collins filed the bill Friday. Sponsors were not listed on the congressional website.

It could have an impact in Mississippi. Since the alcohol content in beer made and sold in the state was raised last year, a handful of breweries have started operation that would qualify for tax under the Small BREW Act.

An economic impact study by Dr. John Friedman at Harvard found the bill would generate $153 million in economic activity in the first year and almost $865 million over five years. It would create nearly 4,400 jobs in the first year.

A similar bill has been introduced in the House.

The small brewer threshold and tax rate were established in 1976 and have not been updated.  Since then, according to figures Collins supplied in a press release, the annual production of America’s largest brewery increased from 45 million barrels to 105 million barrels.

American Craft Beer Week, observed May 13-19, is designed to celebrate and bring awareness to America’s small and independent craft brewers and their contributions to America’s communities and our economy.

Lawmakers approved in a special session Friday a large load of state incentives for Yokohama Tire to make heavy equipment tires in Clay County.

The House passed authorized legislation 117-2 for the project Friday morning. The Senate did the same less than an hour later. The bill now goes to Gov. Phil Bryant, who has said he intends to sign it.

The state will borrow $70 million for land, infrastructure and workforce training. Local governments will chip in $12 million, $1 million from the Appalachian Regional Commission, $900,000 from the TVA and $590,000 from natural gas utility Atmos Energy.

The first phase of the project will represent a $300 million investment from Yokohama, and create in the neighborhood of 500 jobs. The company has plans to expand in three additional phases, raising its investment to over $1 billion and job numbers to 2,000. The expansions are scheduled over the next eight to 10 years. Total state bonding authority for the project is $130 million, with everything above $70 million contingent upon the expansions.

Yokohama will build the facility on a 500-acre megasite close to West Point. Construction will start this fall with plans to start production in fall 2015. Economic development officials have spent the past several months marketing the site in hopes of luring a large manufacturer.

This is the first big fish for the new economic development consortium made up of West Point and Clay County , Columbus and Lowndes County and Starkville and Oktibbeha County. The consortium, known as the Golden Triangle Development Link, had in its sights a Yokohama-like project when it formed last year.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed the bill unanimously Friday morning. Chairman Jeff Smith, R-Columbus, said talks with Yokohama started about a year ago. He said Clay County, whose March unemployment rate was second highest in the state at 18.2 percent, was one of two finalists.

Ad valorem taxes, under a revenue sharing plan West Point and Clay County have entered into, will be split between the city and county.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the company and the state contains clawback provisions that call for the state to receive $35,000 for every job the company comes up short in providing in each phase. For example, if the job count for phase one is 500, Yokohama will have to pay the state $35,000 for every job short of that. The same clawbacks apply to all four phases.

State Auditor Stacey Pickering will have oversight of the project, since the state bonds will be issued under the Mississippi Major Economic Impact Act. Pickering pushed legislation last session – and plans to push again next session – that would have extended his office’s oversight authority to all state bonding programs. Pickering currently does not have automatic oversight over projects assisted under bonding programs like the Advantage Jobs Act and the Mississippi Development Bank.

Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, offered an amendment to the incentive legislation that would have given Cooper Tire in Tupelo a sales tax on equipment break worth $1 million. The amendment was defeated.

“This is going to be such a shot in the arm for West Point,” Smith said.

Sen. David Blount and Rep. Andy Gipson agree it’s a matter of time before they join their colleagues in a special session to hash out funding for the state’s Medicaid program.

Blount, a Jackson Democrat, and Gipson, a Simpson County Republican, recapped the just-ended legislative session Monday at the lunch meeting of the Stennis Capitol Press Corps.

Lawmakers left Jackson last week with no funding for Medicaid after the fiscal year ends on June 30. Republicans and Democrats spent a lot of the session arguing over the program’s expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Like most others in his party, Blount supports expanding the program.

“I think we need to admit that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land,” he said. “And Mississippians will be paying for the expansion whether we actually do it or not.”

Blount cited figures that the program would cost the state $555 million through 2025, but would get $12.1 billion back from the federal government. He added that Democrats would be willing to consider alternatives to outright expansion – such as legislation that would trigger expansion if uncompensated care payments were to disappear from hospitals that provide indigent care.

Gipson echoed Gov. Phil Bryant’s assertion that the state could not afford to add another few hundred thousand Mississippians to the Medicaid rolls, and questioned if the federal government would keep its promise to pay 90 percent of the expansion costs. “It’s odd that a group was willing to leave the Capitol without funding Medicaid,” Gipson said of Democrats’ twice killing the legislation to do so.

Gipson and Blount also took differing views of the handful of tax credits and incentives lawmakers passed. Gipson said incentives applied properly “are great economic development tools,” listing as an example recently passed legislation designed to spur construction of a retail shopping complex in Pearl.

Blount said many times lawmakers vote on incentives without knowing their exact financial impact.

“The Legislature is passing bills that will have a long-term impact (on the state’s budget) with no information on what they will cost,” he said.

Tuesday was the deadline for original floor action on appropriation and revenue bills that originated in the opposite chamber of the Legislature.

One of the bills that died would have offered a tax credit for the installation of solar energy systems.

House bill 1591 died in the Senate Finance Committee.

It would have offered an income and/or franchise tax credit for businesses that install solar energy systems, like those that use solar panels, and other services designed to improve energy efficiency. The credits would have applied to systems purchased and installed after July 1.

Similar legislation has passed in other states – California has become most associated with solar energy and offers similar tax credits — and has created some unintended consequences. Solar lease companies have become popular as money from the 2008 stimulus and other state and federal incentives for the industry became available. Homeowners who essentially rent the systems from solar lease companies don’t get the rebate because they did not purchase anything. The company receives the incentive.

What the homeowner does get is the lease debt associated with the system, even if it’s sold.

Regulation and oversight of solar lease companies – many of which are not headquartered in the state offering the tax credit – has also proven difficult.

The bill that died Tuesday would have allowed lease companies to take advantage of the credit.

The Strengthening Mississippi Academic Research Through (SMART) Business Act has passed the Senate ahead of the next major legislative deadline.

The bill would offer a 25 percent rebate to businesses that contract with Mississippi universities for qualified research. It’s one piece of Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s legislative agenda.

The rebates for one business are capped at $1 million, and are capped overall at $5 million per year.

Hosemann said the legislation would fill some of the gap left by disappearing federal research funds, and help to strengthen the partnership between the business community and Mississippi colleges and universities.

The Senate Finance Committee did insert a reverse repealer into the bill, which is a mechanism used to keep alive the legislation before a deadline, like this Thursday’s deadline for floor action on original legislation. It’s also a way to ensure the legislation ends up in a conference committee.

Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, was the lone “no” vote. The bill is Senate Bill 2537.

The Mississippi House of Representatives passed Friday morning legislation that would allow Mississippi Power to issue bonds, up to $1 billion, to cover costs over $2.4 billion for the Kemper County coal plant. Representatives also approved a bill that would give the Mississippi Public Service Commission authority to set a multi-year rate recovery plan for the plant once it becomes operational.

The vote on the bond bill was 90-26 after about an hour of discussion. The multi-year rate recovery plan bill passed 100-17 with no discussion. Both were held on a motion to reconsider, a procedural move that usually serves only to temporarily delay legislation’s forward movement.

Both bills were in response to a settlement reached last month between the utility and the PSC that lowered what the company could include in the project’s rate base from $2.88 billion to $2.4 billion. The bonds would cover anything over the cap.

Rep. Sherra Lane, D-Waynesboro, offered several amendments to the bond bill that would have prohibited Mississippi Power from collecting any costs incurred before the passage of the legislation, limited what the company could place into the bonds and changed the procedural mechanisms the bond requests would meet at the PSC. She said any decision about cost overruns should lie with the PSC, not on lawmakers.

“This settlement put the $1 billion fee on the Legislature. If the Public Service Commission wants to do that, they have the power to do that.”

The amendments failed. “The more things the company is willing to put into (the rate recovery bonds), the less they can earn on a rate of return,” House Public Utilities Committee Chairman Charles Jim Beckett, R-Bruce, said in opposing the amendment. “The company doesn’t earn a rate of return on the bonds. Issuing the bonds will cost ratepayers less than including these costs in the rate base.”

Rep. Kevin Horan, D-Grenada, offered an amendment that would have limited to $500,000 attorneys’ fees related to issuing the bonds. It passed.

“This bill is fundamentally unfair to every member of the Legislature,” Horan said, echoing Lane’s assertion that the PSC should grapple with whether to allow cost overruns, not lawmakers. “This is a shame.”

Mississippi Power spokesperson Cindy Duvall said in a statement that Friday’s vote “takes us one step closer to saving Mississippi Power customers $1 billion or more.”

The coal plant is scheduled to begin commercial operation in May 2014.

The legislation that would have stopped the requirement that certain small businesses pay two months’ worth of sales and use taxes right before the end of the fiscal year is dead.

Tuesday was the first major deadline for bills to either make it out of the committees to which they were first assigned, or wait until next session.

The accelerated tax payment system requires that taxpayers that collect sales and use taxes and have an average monthly tax liability of at least $20,000 – which encompasses a lot of small businesses – pay June taxes by June 25, a week before a new fiscal year starts. Normally, those taxes are paid the following month. (For example, April taxes are paid on May 20.)

The Mississippi National Federation of Independent Businesses had supported raising that $20,000 threshold to at least $50,000, something that was supposed to happen due to legislation passed a few years ago, but has been delayed. Four bills that would have done that were filed; none made it past the committee deadline.

Several pieces of legislation that have died the last few sessions met the same fate this year  — among them, bills to require nursing homes to carry liability insurance and shifting the burden of proof from claimants to insurance companies in claims arising under all-perils policies.

Other bills that have gotten the attention of the business community fared better. Legislation to expand financial literacy classes to all high school grades made it. That legislation is one Treasurer Lynn Fitch’s priorities.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s collection of tax credit bills are still alive, though they face a later deadline because they’re revenue bills.  The same goes for bills that clarify how tax assessors calculate the tax liability for Section 42, or affordable rental, housing developments.

The first deadline for those bills is Feb. 27, when they must be passed out of their chamber, or die.

Four years ago, lawmakers in Georgia’s General Assembly approved a bill designed to lessen the rate shock for Georgia Power Co. customers related to the utility’s construction of nuclear power units.

Mississippi lawmakers are considering a similar bill for Mississippi Power Co.’s Kemper County coal plant.

The Georgia legislation, which former Gov. Sonny Perdue signed in 2009, allowed Georgia Power  – which, like Mississippi Power, is a subsidiary of Southern Co. – to pass to ratepayers financing costs incurred to build two additional nuclear units at an existing generation plant in the southeastern part of the state.

Starting in January 2011, the law gave Georgia Power five years after the Georgia Public Service Commission approved the project to recover the costs. The law established the financing recovery schedule  separately from the rate base that collected construction work in progress funds. In Georgia, the recovery of CWIP is mandatory.

Georgia Co. officials said while the bill made its way through the statehouse in 2009 that paying financing costs for the $14 billion project as they were accrued would save customers in the long run. The two new units are scheduled to begin producing electricity by 2017, according to recent company projections.

A couple things separate the Georgia law and the proposed legislation here. Georgia’s rate mitigation statute established a five-year recovery window. The Mississippi plan creates a 10-year window, and prohibits the utility from filing to activate the plan until 12 months prior to the calendar year in which the qualifying facility is scheduled to begin operation.

The Kemper plant is supposed to come online in May 2014. That means Mississippi Power can request the plan if and when the law clears the Capitol and is signed by Gov. Phil Bryant.

The Georgia law established a rate schedule specifically for the recovery of financing costs, since the recovery of CWIP was already mandated. The legislation that has cleared the Mississippi Senate’s Energy and Finance committees does not restrict CWIP or financing costs from being included.

The hard cap on the Kemper costs Mississippi Power can recover through ratemaking proceedings at the Mississippi Public Service Commmission was lowered last week from $2.88 billion to $2.4 billion, as part of a rate settlement between commissioners and the utility. A bill that would permit Mississippi Power to issue bonds for overruns – up to $1 billion – sits in the Senate Energy and Finance committees.

The latest issue of the Mississippi Business Journal has a story about the push to raise the liability threshold that requires small businesses to participate in the accelerated tax payment system.

Simply put, small businesses with a monthly average of at least $20,000 in tax liability have to pay a portion of June sales and use taxes no later than June 25.

Normally, those tax payments are due on the 20^th of the next month. For example, April taxes are due no later than May 20. The accelerated system forces small businesses that qualify to pay two months’ (May and June) worth of taxes on one day.

Ron Aldridge of the Mississippi NFIB, which is advocating the proposal to raise the threshold from $20,000 to $50,000, provided some data from the Department of Revenue that sheds light on how many small businesses are triggered by the $20,000 threshold, and how many would be triggered by the $50,000 threshold. The data arrived after the MBJ’s press deadline last week, and did not make the print version.

As of Oct. 26 2012, 2,623 businesses qualified under the $20,000 threshold, and paid $157.9 million in sales and use taxes. Of those businesses, 853 would still have to pay accelerated sales and use taxes if the threshold increased to $50,000. Of the $157.9 million total, those businesses paid $123.1 million, about 67 percent of the total.

The NFIB, in a press release that accompanied the data, said the state having to wait a month for $34.8 million is not enough to justify keeping the threshold at $20,000.

Four bills that address the issue have been filed and sit either in the House Ways and Means Committee or in the Senate Finance Committee. Gov. Phil Bryant made raising the threshold part of his executive budget recommendation late last year, so it’s likely at least one will be sent to the floor for debate before the first committee deadline Feb. 5.

Most of Monday’s hour-long Kemper coal plant hearing at the Mississippi Supreme Court centered on two questions:

If the Mississippi Public Service Commission allows Mississippi Power Co. to charge its ratepayers for the facility’s construction, will it constitute a tax, or will it simply be a rate assessment?

If it is a tax, does it render the Baseload Act unconstitutional?

Mike Adelman, an attorney who represents Thomas Blanton, says the Baseload Act – a 2008 law that authorized utilities, with PSC permission, to collect construction-work-in-progress funds from ratepayers – is unconstitutional because it violates the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment, which prevents confiscatory taking of property without due process.

“It’s a tax on electricity that has not yet been provided,” said Adelman, whose client is a Hattiesburg resident and one of Mississippi Power’s roughly 186,000 ratepayers.

Blanton’s claim was originally part of the rate dispute between commissioners and Mississippi Power. The dispute arose over the summer when commissioners denied a 13 percent rate increase that would have generated about $58 million to put toward the coal plant’s construction. Commissioners said then they would not entertain anymore rate increase requests related to the plant until the Mississippi Supreme Court had ruled on litigation brought against the plant by the Mississippi Sierra Club. That litigation is separate from Monday’s proceedings.

The PSC’s stance changed last week, when commissioners and Mississippi Power Co. agreed to a settlement whose terms will allow the utility to ask for CWIP recovery in exchange for the hard cap on the project being lowered from $2.88 billion to $2.4 billion, and ratepayers being granted an ownership share in the plant’s TRIG technology.

Adelman, in his argument against the Baseload Act, equated CWIP with a tax, something he said the PSC does not have authority to levy. Even if lawmakers intended to convey that authority in the Baseload Act, Adelman said, the language in the law does not do that.

The law essentially forces Mississippi Power customers to become investors in the project, Adelman said.

“There is a recognized constitutional right – a right that is recognized by this court – that rates cannot be assessed for power that is not being delivered,” Adelman told the seven justices. Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. and Associate Justice Leslie King were not in attendance.

Mississippi Power attorney Ricky Cox said that law allows for utilities to increase rates for “used and useful” services. “And CWIP is a used and useful service,” he told the court.

“These facilities (which are eligible for CWIP funds) have unique characteristics,” Cox said. “They run 24 hours a day and provide dependable power. That’s the benefit customers are getting.”

Blanton’s argument that the Baseload Act is unconstitutional is moot and should be dismissed, Cox said, because the Baseload Act has not been applied.

Justin Matheny, representing the PSC, echoed Cox’s assertion that ratepayers do receive a tangible benefit in exchange for paying CWIP.

“In this case, they’re helping to build a new plant and helping to continue to provide electricity into the future.”

The small amount of back and forth between justices and lawyers related to the original rate dispute centered on whether the settlement was final, and rendered the case closed.

Presiding Justice Jess Dickinson during the hearing expressed skepticism that it was, since the settlement kicked proceedings back to the PSC. Any dispute arising out of the new proceedings, Dickenson said , would likely land back before the high court.

Justices will issue a written decision, something Dickinson told lawyers he hoped would happen soon.