First, a big thank you to Scot Chestnut for filling in for Uncle Henry this morning.
Some of our top MS stories:
Mississippi Power customers could be spending slightly less for electricity in the near future. The utility made its annual fuel adjustment filing with the Public Service Commission yesterday. It proposes a three-percent reduction that would decrease a resident's monthly bill by about four dollars for each one thousand kilowatt hours of electricity used. The rollback would take effect in the first billing cycle of February 2019.
Drivers in Mississippi are continuing to witness a retreat from high gasoline prices. Triple-A reports it's due in part to an increase in crude inventories. As another work week draws to a close, and Thanksgiving travelers prepare to hit the road next week, the statewide average price of regular is now in the ballpark of two-40 a gallon, down about 20 cents from a month ago. GasBuddy.com reports some stations along the coast are selling regular for as low as two-oh-five a gallon.
Governor Phil Bryant is out with his list of budget priorities for the 2020 fiscal year. And, with revenue to the state expected to increase by almost three percent, he's not calling for any rollbacks in spending. Bryant wants the state to hike teacher pay by 50-million-dollars over a two-year period. Among a laundry list of other expenditures, he proposes adding 75-million-dollars to the Public Employees' Retirement System and increasing spending on Child Protection Services and care for the state's most vulnerable children by just over 26-million-dollars.
A video is going viral that purports to show GOP Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith supporting voter suppression during a campaign stop earlier this month in Starkville. She is seen speaking with a group of citizens by her campaign bus, noting at one point that perhaps it should be made a little more difficult for liberals to vote. Her campaign says that Hyde-Smith was making a joke. A spokesman for the Mike Espy for Senate campaign issued a statement saying that voting rights in Mississippi is not a laughing matter. The Republican and Democrat face off November 27th in a runoff election to determine which of them will serve the remaining two years of retired Senator Thad Cochran's six-year term.