Jackson Free Press

Forget about making Mississippi healthier. Forget about the cost to taxpayers. The fight over Medicaid in Mississippi is turning into an all-out partisan turf war.

The latest salvo came yesterday, when Democratic Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood issued an opinion stating that the governor cannot lawfully run the Medicaid program if the Legislature fails to reauthorize the program.

At odds over whether the state should expand Medicaid, lawmakers couldn't come to a consensus on renewing Medicaid before the legislative session ended this spring, leaving the future of the program up in the air.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, who opposes Medicaid expansion, has said that if Democrats, who support the expansion and have asked for legislative debate on the subject, continue standing in the way of Medicaid's reauthorization that he would run the program himself.

In recent weeks, legislative Republicans and the Mississippi Republican Party have blitzed the Internet and social media with anti-Obamacare messages ahead of the July 1 Medicaid deadline. The MS GOP has started an online petition against Obamacare while Speaker Philip Gunn, a Clinton Republican, has written op-eds for several local newspapers and blogs.

Hood's opinion this week relies on a similar opinion Hood issued in 2009, which states that "a governor cannot create or re-create a state agency that has been repealed by operation of law, nor can a governor divert funds which may be appropriated to a statutorily repealed agency to some other agency."

The response from Bryant's office was terse. Bryant's spokesman, Mick Bullock, responded to Hood in an email to the Associated Press: "That's all it is, his opinion."

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2013/jun/20/12276/

A couple of musical tidbits...

Verbatim release:

City of Jackson Launches Self-Service Portal for Water Customers

The City of Jackson will launch the new customer self-service portal on Monday, Aug. 1, providing convenience and useful information to the City’s water customers. The portal allows water customers to pay bills online, view account balances and copies of previous months’ bills, and monitor and track water usage.

Customers can visit https://waterwebcss.jacksonms.gov/OUCSSPortal to set up an account.

Users of the self-service portal will see the same data that is available to the Water Department as they generate monthly bills. Data is available in near real-time and is supplied from the automatic water meter on your property. If customers need more information than what is available on the portal, they can contact the Water Sewer Business Administration at 601-960-2000.

Customers can take simple steps to reduce water consumption and water bills:

Five-minute showers use about 10 gallons of water, or about 75% less water than baths.

Turning off the water while you brush teeth can reduce your water usage to less than 1 gallon, whereas letting the water run for 2 minutes will waste as much as 4 gallons of water.

Watering your lawn uses about 2 gallons per minute; consider how much time you need to water your lawn—and whether the lawn really needs it.

If you wash dishes by hand, you can use as much as 27 gallons of water. Consider scraping dishes first, letting them soak in soapy water before rinsing, and not letting the water run the entire time you’re washing.