A Congressional Delegation headed by Nancy Pelosi and Gene Taylor will be touring New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast Monday, July 21st to review progress of our rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Once their tour is completed they will meet at 5:30 PM at Our Lady of the Gulf parish center in Bay St. Louis. Residents are welcome to attend and discuss the recovery with congressional leaders. It is important that we have as large a crowd as possible to represent the Coast. This is the third visit Pelosi has made to Bay St. Louis since Katrina.

I am happy to announce that former Senator Scotty Cuevas has decided to dismiss the appeal of his election conyest. We were notified by his lawyer late last week and the dismissal is in process at this moment. I want to thank again everyone who has been so supportive through this long process. I also want to wish Mr. Cuevas well in his future endeavors.

The House and Senate adjourned last week without resolving the medicaid problem. The House adjourned first and was to come back Tuesday, July 8th. Later, the Senate adjourned and set the date to come back Thursday, July 10th. Because the chambers set different dates to return, the Constitution gives the governor the authority in an extraordinary session to determine when the legislature will reconvene. The Governor has set the date for the legislature to return on August 4th.

You may wonder why the Senate did not simply return the same day as the House. Apparently, the governor asked the Senate leadership to return on a different date so that he could have us return in August. It is unclear what the governor wants to accomplish in the interim, but one can assume that he will continue to promote his plan as the best resolution to the medicaid problem. Meanwhile, legislative leaders from both ends of the Capitol are still negotiating.

Before we adjourned most recently Sen. Alan Nunnelee, one of the chief senate negotiators reported that Lt. Governor Bryant had made several offers to the House negotiators. According to Sen. Nunnelee, an offer was made to take up the cigarette tax in the 2009 Regular Session if the House would pass the governor's plan. Another offer was to ask Governor Barbour to expand the call of the current special session to include a cigarette tax if the House would only pass the governor's plan. These offers are significant as it appears to be the first time that the possibility of a cigarette tax has been injected into the discussion by Senate leadership. Of course, based on the earlier ruling of the Lt. Governor, a cigarette tax cannot be considered unless the special session call is expanded. Sen. Nunnelee reported that the House flatly refused both of these offers. I inquired of the Chair as to why we couldn't simply ask the governor to expand the call right away so that a complete package could be considered and a compromise achieved before we left the Capitol, rather than trying to accomplish our goal in piecemeal fashion. The reply from Sen. Nunnelee was that he thought my idea was good one and that he would get to work on it. So, there is hope that this issue can be resolved.

Of course, the idea of a compromise including both the governor's plan and an increase in the cigarette tax is neither original to me nor a new concept. Twenty-three Democratic Senators authored a bill that would have do just that over a month ago. We are left to wonder why we can't wrap this matter up in a package that both chambers can agree on and pass, then go home for the rest of the summer. Instead, the legislature will take off most of the month of July and return August 4th to continue the special session.

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