Greg Snowden

The United States barely is into the second month of the COVID-19 outbreak. Already, for Mississippi, it seems clear that whatever else happens, state revenues will take a potentially massive hit in the wake of the current crisis; we just don’t know yet to what extent. This necessarily will mean downward adjustments in state budgets, because actual revenues simply will not be able to support normally-budgeted levels of spending. Unfortunately, agencies across the board will see their typically expected funding cut.

It is for a time precisely as this that the Working Cash Stabilization Fund (“the rainy day fund”) exists. The Legislature in the past few years wisely has set aside $550 million that sits today in the state’s rainy day reserve. This money will be available when needed to ameliorate the severity of budget cuts that inevitably would be much greater but for the existence of this prudently-planned reserve.

Maintaining a healthy rainy day reserve is always a fiscal and political struggle. Advocates across the board for a plethora of state programs always plead that their own special interest is the most important priority and should be “fully funded” regardless of the importance and needs of other programs and notwithstanding the state of the rainy day reserves. If this siren call (“it’s raining!”) is heeded either through fiscal ignorance or political weakness, state budgets would face disaster when unforeseeable but inevitable crises (such as COVID-19) suddenly strike. Thanks to the conservative and fiscally sound policies of the past eight years, our state in 2020 is reasonably positioned to weather the coming fiscal storm.

The thing to remember is that once this fiscal crisis abates and the recovery gets underway, and it will, there will be an absolute necessity to re-fill the rainy day fund as soon as feasibly may be done. A new chorus will then arise from advocates of all stripes begging that their own favorite agencies and programs should be restored to “full funding” first, before the state fills up the reserve fund. Prudent fiscal policy will dictate that these pleas, earnest and well-meaning as they are, must be ignored. Hopefully, the political will then exists to do so. Fiscal integrity has to come first, as the top priority over everything else. There will be no better proof of the truth of that as we see the governor and the legislature in coming weeks and months use the rainy day fund to get Mississippi through the imminent state budgetary crisis as smoothly as possible.

Greg Snowden, a Republican, served Lauderdale and Clarke counties in the Mississippi Legislature, from 2000-19. He served as speaker pro tempore, the second-highest ranking officer of the House of Representatives, from 2012-19.