Why Wesson Residents Should Pay Attention to the 2026 Mississippi Legislative Session

Special to Wesson News

Mississippi lawmakers started their 2026 state legislative session on January 6 and will continue meeting until April 5. 

Even after Democrats capitalized on special legislative elections last year, Republicans still control both the State House of Representative and Senate, although their grip has loosened slightly, with the party’s supermajority in the Senate broken after Democrats gained two seats.

Leading the Senate for his seventh session as lieutenant governor is Republican Delbert Hosemann. In the House, Republican Jason White will oversee the chamber for his third session after being elected by his peers in 2024.

Thousands of bills will be filed, with hundreds making it to a floor vote.  Major issues are education, healthcare and reinstituting a ballot initiative.

Education.  In the House, which made waves last session by immediately dropping a massive tax package that went on to be signed by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, education reforms seem to be the next big focus for Speaker White and company.  White wants school choice -- the ability of parents to select where their child receives an education, rather than being confined by the neighborhood in which they live.  Open public-to-public transfers or “portability,” expansion of charter school options, creation of an education savings account program that would allow public dollars to be used for private school tuition and related policies are ways to make this happen.

Critics of school choice argue it could be detrimental to the health of some public school districts that already struggle financially if per-student fund allocations followed pupils who transfer to a different school.  White, however, counters counters that more options for students and their families should make individual districts more competitive in providing the best education possible.

It’s unclear what the appetite for school choice, or at least some form of it, will be in the Senate.  Lt. Gov. Hosemann has said he supports a limited form, such as the portability, but has not publicly been as all-in on school choice as White.

Both White and Hosemann, however, do agree on paying public K-12 teachers more, with Mississippi still lagging behind the national average for teacher pay and experiencing a shortage of teachers, administrators, and school support staff.  Hosemann also wants to tighten the state’s truancy laws, with nearly 28% of students considered “chronically” absent during the 2024-25 school year, meaning they missed 10% or more of classes.  He has floated the idea of having parents testify before a judge as to the reason for their child’s noticeable absences.

Healthcare.  Medicaid expansion is expected to remain on the back burner due to pending changes on the federal level, but several healthcare-related bills are expected to be introduced.  Rep. Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany who chairs the House Public Health and Human Services Committee, says he has received “a lot of public feedback” on the idea of stipends being issued to mothers during and in the months after pregnancy as Mississippi currently battles the highest infant mortality rate in the U.S.  Creekmore is also expected to introduce a bill to make the state’s health information exchange uniform statewide and another that would mandate health insurance coverage for biomarker testing in cancer.

The biomarker technology helps ensure patients get the correct treatment for the cancer they’re battling.

The legislature also plans to move forward with the first year of allocation of tens of millions of dollars in opioid settlement funds. Creekmore said the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council has recommended a five-tier plan to the speaker and lieutenant governor that would spread the funds across 122 applicants working to fight the state’s opioid crisis.

Ballot initiative.  It has been more than four years since Mississippi residents have been able to propose new laws or constitutional amendments directly on the ballot for public vote. Sen. Jeremy England, the chair of the Senate Elections Committee, plans to make another run at changing that during the upcoming session.

The ballot initiative process was stripped by the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2021 over a technical flaw in the state constitution that required signatures from five congressional districts, even though the state had since been reduced to four congressional districts. The ruling came after citizens rallied to legalize medical marijuana through a grassroots campaign.  In the four sessions since, lawmakers have been unable to restore it due to a lack of widespread interest, disagreements over signature thresholds, and disagreements over potential caveats that would prevent citizens from making changes to certain laws.  England did not disclose many specifics about his bill, but did say it will take into account the evolution of digital marketing and social media campaigns.

Other potential legislation are legalization of mobile sports betting, something the House passed in 2025 before it died in the Senate; a new retirement benefit structure passed in 2025 that does not force first responders to serve an additional five years before being able to draw retirement benefits; a tax rebate program endorsed by Lt. Gov. Hosemann that would result in taxpayers being handed back 15% of what they paid the state in 2023; helping Jackson revitalize with state help, easing the process of restoring voting rights for individuals who were convicted of certain felonies, shifting control over registered apprenticeship programs to the state instead of the federal government, and distributing BP oil spill money.  Lawmakers have also been tasked by a federal judge with redrawing the state’s Supreme Court map, which was deemed to be diluting Black voting power.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Excerpted from a Super Talk Radio report.