Blog

On Monday, the Mississippi House of Representatives met for our second week of the 2017 legislative session. Legislators are continuing to work on drafting legislation to introduce. This week marked the deadline to request new bills, and all new bills must be officially introduced by Monday January 16^th. You can view all of the bills that have been introduced thus far on the legislative website. This page will be updated as new ones are added through next week.

On Wednesday, the House passed a comprehensive campaign finance reform bill. House Bill 479, which was authored by Speaker Philip Gunn, makes a number of changes to the campaign finance law. The most important one prevents elected officials from using campaign funds for personal expenses. I was glad to support this bill, as it restores a measure of accountability and transparency to campaign finance in Mississippi.

You can read more about the campaign finance bill, along with the other measures considered by the House this week, on my weekly vote post here. As always, I’ve included a description of each bill along with an explanation of my vote.

In addition to drafting bills, several legislative committees met this week to discuss the issues we anticipate working on this session. Several of the committees that I serve on met this week, including Medicaid, Drug Policy, and Youth and Family Affairs. As we continue to craft legislation, I will work to promote policies that strengthen families and promote liberty, well-being, and economic prosperity for all Mississippians.

This morning, I joined several other legislators from the Jackson metro area for the Leadership Greater Jackson State Government Panel at the Capitol. This is a great group of civic-minded members of the community. We discussed a number of opportunities in the legislature, including improving the quality of our workforce by removing barriers to employment.

Throughout next week, many more bills will be introduced, and committees will begin to meet to consider all of the ideas that are proposed from representatives across the state. On Tuesday, the legislature will convene in a joint session to hear the Governor’s State of the State Address.

For updates throughout the week, be sure to like my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter. Please reach out to me with any questions or requests you might have. You can always email me at joel@joelbomgar.com, or reach me any time on my cell at (601) 207-0813.

Thank you for your support!

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