Gov. Haley Barbour and others will be allowed to challenge a five-year-old court order that sends part of Mississippi’s tobacco lawsuit settlement to a private anti-smoking group, a chancery judge ruled Friday.
Chancellor Jaye Bradley’s ruling does not take the payments away from the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi. But it does put this year’s $20 million on hold, meaning the money cannot be spent until the legal dispute is resolved, officials said.
“Even though everybody knows this issue will ultimately be decided by the state Supreme Court, the judge’s decision at this preliminary stage is clearly a victory for the taxpayers,” Barbour said in a written statement.
Partnership chairman Mike Moore said the anti-smoking group already has been working with legislative leaders to answer their questions about how annual payments are spent. Moore said the Partnership volunteered to put this year’s payment on hold until questions are resolved, and is operating on last year’s budget anyway, so its programs would not be effected.
“It’s getting a little ridiculous at this point,” Moore said. “The governor is spending thousands of dollars to stop the most successful smoking prevention program in the country.”
Partnership spokeswoman Sharon Garrison said Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck and House Speaker Billy McCoy “have shown a lot of support for these programs and we believe that they will work with us to make sure that (the programs) continue.”
The Partnership spends money on a host of programs, from smoking cessation to school nurses to anti-tobacco ads aimed at teenagers. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, based in Washington, has said Mississippi has one of the most effective anti-smoking programs in the nation.
Moore, a Democrat, filed a massive lawsuit against tobacco companies when he was the state attorney general in the mid-1990s, making Mississippi the first state to file such a suit. In 1997, Moore negotiated a multi-billion-dollar settlement for Mississippi. Legislators later agreed to put most of the annual settlement payments into a health care trust fund.
Moore reached a separate agreement with cigarette makers to sponsor an anti-smoking program in Mississippi, and he still serves as chairman of the Partnership’s board. When funding for the pilot program ran out after three years, Moore persuaded Bradley to issue the Dec. 22, 2000, court order that gives the Partnership $20 million a year of the $100 million-plus that the state collects for the lawsuit settlement.
Barbour, a Republican who became governor in January 2004, says the $20 million that goes to the Partnership should go through the normal state appropriations process, with legislators deciding how the money is spent.
State Treasurer Tate Reeves, a Republican, serves on the health care trust fund board and is siding with Barbour in the dispute over the $20 million.
In a written statement Friday, Reeves said: “I believe it is unconstitutional for $20 million that rightfully belongs to the people of Mississippi to be diverted to a private organization with no public accountability on the expenditure of those funds.”
Moore’s successor as attorney general, Democrat Jim Hood, has sided with the Partnership on the dispute over the $20 million.
Bradley wrote in her ruling Friday: “It is clear that both sides of this dispute, the Gov. and the Trust Fund and the Attorney General, believe they are serving the general public interest of Mississippi, however, they strongly disagree on the method that would best accomplish this goal.”
The “Judge lets governor challenge payments to anti-smoking group”
Originally written By: Emily Wagster Pettus
