VIDEO: Legislative Road Funding Bill

MAYHEW, Miss.(WCBI)- Improving roads and bridges in Mississippi is the message as Lawmakers at the capital work toward funding Senate Bill 2939.

This bill would give 50 million dollars in bonds: 25 million for counties and 25 million for cities with additional money given for road and bridge repair.

Now, the entire road project would run the state an estimated 150 million to 175 million dollars.

Both Representative Tyrone Ellis and Jay Hughes says it’s important for the senate to pass this bill to give the community the basic essentials they deserve.

“We don’t even know what the senate is going to do. The senate may or may not accept that bill that we are sending over there. If they decide to reject it we’ll be back to square one so we’re just hoping that they would at least consider it so we can get to conference and hash it out and try and make some improvements on our roads and our bridges,” said Ellis.

” The most surprising thing is with all the issues we have with mental health with health care with public education with roads an bridges that we spent several hours debating a bill for whether kids could have water on a school bus. There’s been no legislation to slow down massive tax cuts no legislation to generate revenue we’re simply cutting basic government services,” said Hughes.

The additional money for the roads and bridges project would come from the tax Mississippi is already collecting from out-of-state purchases.