Video: Initiative 42 Opponents and Proponents Break Down the Issues

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MISSISSIPPI – (WCBI) — Initiative 42 is a hot topic with politicians and educators across the state have been speaking.

“50th in education, Forbes ranking Mississippi 50th in future job growth and so forth, because of their belief, their perception that Mississippi is not going to get serious about creating jobs and skills in people that go through the schools for the new wave of high tech jobs,” say Political Science Professor at MSU Dr. Marty Wiseman.

Supporters of Initiative 42 say they know it’s unorthodox, but necessary to improve our education system and guarantee education funding.
But opponents say if K through 12 gets fully funded all general fund budgets will get the ax, including higher education and law enforcement.

“What is going to happen, because we’re not raising taxes, we’re going to fully fund MAEP should 42 pass ,and that means we’re going to cut the 42 other general fund budgets by at least 8%,” says Representative Gary Chism.

Dr. Wiseman says the cuts won’t be as dramatic.

“Simply putting a floor under education funding, and a guarantee as new revenue occurs that 25% of that will be put into education until they retain a target formulated amount and it may take 6,7 years to do that,” says Dr. Wiseman.

Representative Chism says even though the state fell over 200 billion dollars short of fully funding schools this year, that making that money up through cuts doesn’t really add up.

“It is a lot of money , but considering the K12 budget is 2.4 billion dollars, it’s really not,” says Representative Chism.

He says fully funding the schools or not should be up to the legislature, not a judge as proposed in 42, because the words “adequate” and “efficient” are not defined.

“He could take money away from school children in Lowndes County, and give it to the delta, to make it under the definition of adequate,” says Representative Chism.

Dr. Wiseman disagrees.

“That’s not the case, that judge would be there to assist the equity on a year by year basis as far as funding goes, he’s kind of like a referee,”

Find more information on the “For” side here. And more on the ” Against” side here.

Learn more about the ballot here.