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Tune in to The Extra Mile presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. Co-hosts Paul Katool and Will Craft take listeners inside the world of transportation infrastructure in Mississippi.
The Extra Mile Podcast: Legislative Session
Governor Tate Reeves
(Brad White) Welcome to another edition of The Extra Mile Podcast: Legislative Session, presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. I’m MDOT Executive Director Brad White. Today we have a very special episode: a conversation between myself and the 65th Governor of the State of Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves. Governor, thank you for having us.
(Gov. Reeves) Thanks for being here, Brad.
(Brad White) I thought we’d start out - we appreciate you hosting us in the wonderful Governor’s Mansion of the state of Mississippi. And it’s got a lot of history here, and I’ve heard you tell a lot of good stories about it so, why don’t you tell us a little bit about this house?
(Gov. Reeves) Well, it’s a, it’s a wonderful place. It’s obviously very historic. It is rumored to be the second longest continuous occupied governor’s mansion in America. That’s if you believe the people in the state of Virginia, which I don’t always believe them.
(Brad White) Not over our people.
(Gov. Reeves) Not over our people. But it was built - started in the late 1830s. Most of the construction occurred in 1841, and Governor Tucker and his family moved in in 1842. And so, as you can imagine, imagine, just shy 200 years of history here in this building. And where we’re sitting here today was in the original structure. They added onto the mansion in the early 1900s, which is where the actual living quarters are. And we’ve obviously spent a lot of time in this particular building, particularly through the Covid pandemic. Both you and I have.
(Brad White) Well, that’s what I was going to go to next. During Covid, as you said, we spent a lot of time here reading over executive orders and things like emergency declarations. And you kind of set the record, in a way that sometimes you may not want to, in a number of emergencies that you had to deal with - but mention some of that.
(Gov. Reeves) Yeah. There’s no doubt. The going back to 1972, which is the year in which the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency first started keeping data. The most federally declared disasters we’ve ever had in Mississippi before I became governor was four. During my first 14 months in office, and you were here for the entire time, we had 14. And we had everything from tornadoes to hurricanes to flooding, here in the city of Jackson and down river in the Pearl River. The Covid pandemic was one of those 14 that lasted for the majority of the -
(Brad White) - prison issues
(Gov. Reeves) - and during the vast majority of the time. And, obviously, several of the issues that we inherited inside of state agencies whether it was at the Department of Corrections, the Department of Human Services, and other challenges that we inherited kept us very busy during that time.
And I’ve often joked that I’ve got three offices here in downtown Jackson, one at the Sillers building, one at the state capitol. We do a lot of official pictures and whatnot at the state capitol, and I’m back and forth at Sillers from time to time. But because of Covid and how much we had going on, we really used this office here more often than others, which brings pluses and minuses.
The good news is, when your office is in the same building as where you live, then when there’s a tornado or hurricane or a disaster in the middle of the night, you can easily get to your office. That’s the good news. The bad news is, when you live in the same place that your office is, you never leave the office. And that’s certainly been true over the last several years, and, and we’ll probably will continue to be because this is a - while a great opportunity and a great job, it’s certainly no day is the same as the day before, and there’s always new issues and challenges that have to be dealt with.
(Brad White) And it allows you to go from one issue to other rather seamlessly by bringing people into one spot, and you’re able to just move through it pretty quickly. It was like the central headquarters.
(Gov. Reeves) That, that is exactly right. And that’s really what being governor is all about: is having the ability and having a competent staff that helps you move from an issue that is incredibly important that may be way over here to another issue, that is equally important, within the same hour and completely change focus because there is constantly things that need to be dealt with.
(Brad White) Right. Well, obviously this is a transportation podcast, and I’ve heard you talk a lot about economic development. That’s one of your major focuses since you’ve been governor, and transportation is a big part of that. And I thought that maybe you could talk a little bit about that and how you see that fitting into the overall vision of improving Mississippi economically.
(Gov. Reeves) Yeah. Obviously, the transportation infrastructure is a critical component of a number of different areas in the state. Number one, you’ve got to move people to and from work, school, etc. You also have to ensure that you’re investing to, to ensure that we have proper safety on all of our highways and roadways throughout the state. And then third, an issue that’s critically important to me, is you do not win large economic development projects unless you have adequate infrastructure to get products to and from the marketplace.
So, you talk about a major investment that we recently announced which was the major aluminum mill up in Lowndes County. The, the, we have advantages in our state in that we have waterways on the eastern side of the state in the Tennessee Tom Bigby. We have the Mississippi River that runs basically the entire western part of our state.
When you talk about the northern part of the state, we’ve got the advantage of having interstate 55 and interstate 40 just north of the state line there, north of Memphis, which literally can get goods and services all throughout the entire country, if you’re using the interstate. And, of course, we also have the advantage of having a little, small company that’s run by a Mississippian named FedEx that certainly distributes goods and service there at the Memphis airport.
So, we’ve got a lot of advantages. And one of the things that we’ve tried to do is to recognize where we have a competitive advantage and take advantage of it. And, um, clearly as we progress forward, the thing that we’re going to be talking more and more about is making sure, as we have identified the 30 best economic development sites throughout the state - and they are situated throughout the state - that we have adequate infrastructure, which includes, certainly, roads and bridges, but also includes water and sewer and utilities and other opportunities.
And so, you think of some of the opportunities that we have to improve safety. I actually talked, uh, to some reporters earlier today. They’re very interested in the safety issues that you and I have talked about around interstate 20 in Warren County. And, and I go to Eagle Lake from time to time, and trying to get on the interstate from highway 61, which is not unlike it in back in those exits going all the way to the river. It was just designed at a different time with a different number of automobiles that were riding the interstate, and that needs to be updated. It’s an extremely expensive project but one that I think we’re all working towards finding the resources to do.
You talk about the same can be said about capacity when you look at the interstate 55 coming out of Memphis and coming south - that is the first couple of phases that have certainly been completed, where you have some six lanes south of the state line. But when we put - made the decision to spend an enormous amount of money on I-269. It really opened up a ton of, of land for more economic development for more homes.
And it’s literally taken - and you probably know the numbers - but it’s taken 70 or 80 or 90,000 cars a day that are now traveling on I-269, but yet the number of cars traveling up and down I-55 hasn’t changed a lot. And that’s because we’re seeing economic growth. We’re seeing population growth in that area. And so, we’ve got to continuously look for ways to stay caught up to the extent that’s possible. And, and that’s just one example. There’s so many others.
Highway 15, for instance, there in in Tippah County, where 15 is four-lane up into the uh, uh, the Union-Tippah County line. And, and we’re certainly looking for ways to, to extend that all the way up to the state line over time. Then, you come down all the way to the south part of the state and I-10, and, and you’ve got certainly six lanes of I-10 that turn into four lanes, and then go back to six lanes throughout south Mississippi that, again, we’ve got to continue to work towards it.
And then you’ve got the north and south corridors coming off the Gulf Coast that, again, you talk about the need for economic growth and economic development and focusing on that, but you also have safety issues, where you’re trying to get people off the coastline if, in fact, a hurricane is sitting out there in the Gulf. And so, there’s no shortage of, of opportunities.
And one of the things that I’ve really appreciated in your tenure at the department, uh, is we sit down and talk about these issues. And we recognize that we have challenges, but, as just as I said in my first “State of the State” address, I got elected not to hide our challenges, but to actually try to fix them. And that’s what we’re trying to do every single day. And we certainly haven’t solved every problem out there, and we live in a world of limited resources, and that’s just the way we are. But we’re in a much better shape financially than we’ve ever been in. And now it’s about, lets talk about how we can invest the monies that we’ve collected in the most appropriate way. And I think we’ll talk about that over the next couple, couple of weeks.
(Brad White) Well, you’ll remember as Senator Trent Lott used to say, talking about companies that we were trying to recruit into the state, “If they can’t get here, they aren’t coming.” And so, one of the things that, with your leadership and leadership of the legislature, that we’ve been able to do at the Department of Transportation, which is, I think, will prove to be, uh, you know, really dynamic for the state, is restarting the capacity program, where you’re putting back major construction projects around the state that can move traffic better, that can move traffic more safely and efficiently. And do just what you were talking about: opening up other lands and properties around the state for more economic development enhancements, enhancements around.
(Gov. Reeves) No doubt. Well, as you know, seven, eight years ago we looked up, and we found ourselves in a position where we had a lot of rural bridges that were having troubles on mainly state aide roads, but not entirely. And so, with the creation of the lottery, we created a new revenue stream that could be dedicated to that particular purpose. Well, when you take a new revenue stream that’s dedicated to fixing bridges and literally y’all fixed hundreds of them over the last several years, well, that frees up money in the operating budget to then look at some of these capacity projects.
And then plus the legislature and, and I signed into law an additional 40 or $50 million last year to help with those capacity projects. And those capacity projects are incredibly important because we do have areas where we’re seeing significant economic growth, and we have a significant population growth, so some of these capacity projects are for the next economic project. But a lot of them are catching up just to where the development has gone, so that we can move traffic, and do it in a safe way.
(Brad White) Right. Well, talking about the legislature, there’s a lot of other things going on other than just transportation. Anything special you want to talk about there, or other projects that you have that you’re working on with them?
(Gov. Reeves) Yeah. The legislature is in. We’re approaching a deadline day. I know there were bills that were being debated when I was over there just a few minutes ago. What we’re really focused on this year is any legislation that we believe can help enhance making Mississippi a better place to invest capital, a better place to create jobs, and a better place to raise a family. That’s really what we’re pushing this year.
And so, we talked to, we talked a little bit about my personal desire to eliminate the income tax in Mississippi. We’ve cut it from 5% to 4%. We’ve made real progress. There are nine states in America that have no income tax. Of the 41 states that do, Mississippi has the 5th lowest in America. And not only do we have the 5th lowest income tax, we also have the highest amount for, um, that is not taxed. So, if you make up to $36,000 a year, you don’t have an income tax in Mississippi. So, you, it only starts if you’re a married couple filing jointly at $36,000. And so, again, that’s the highest number in all of America. And so, what we think is, if we allow more people to keep more of their money, we’ll be in even better shape.
And so, we’re certainly working that. We made the largest tax cut in Mississippi history six years ago. We surpassed that with the largest tax cut in Mississippi history last year, and we’re still collecting over $1 billion more in revenue. So, those who are opposed to, to tax cuts - and, and you can probably guess who they are - for those who are opposed to tax cuts, they make the same old arguments that it’ll lead to significantly less revenue, but that’s not necessarily true if you see economic growth and population growth, and you have more people working, making more money, um, then actually tax revenues can actually go up.
And so, one of the reasons we have, um, unexpected collections this year between 7.5 and $8 billion is because our per capita incomes in Mississippi over the last three years are up almost 20%. And you know part of that is inflation, but a big part of that is the training and retraining for jobs of the next 50 years, rather than focusing on the jobs that we’ve had in Mississippi for the last 50 years.
(Brad White) Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you for the rest of the session. I know that you’ll accomplish a good deal with that. I would get in a lot of trouble before we get off of this if I didn’t ask about Mrs. Elee and the family. You’ve got a ballgame, I think, you are going to when we get through here.
(Gov. Reeves) Yeah. I’ve got a senior in high school, and she is headed towards the end of her high school career. And she’s just done a phenomenal job. I’m extremely proud of her. Her middle sister is in the 10th grade, and her younger sister’s in the fifth grade. So, I’m actually going to a fifth-grade basketball game here shortly this afternoon for a few minutes. But the kids are doing great. It’s, uh, it was kind of a shock to move into downtown Jackson in February of 2020, but they’ve really adjusted well, and they’re doing phenomenally well in school, and I couldn’t be more proud of them. I tell folks, “I really do two things in life now: I work, and I go watch my kids play sports but not necessarily in that order.”
(Brad White) I remember when you first became governor – the, the youngest daughter, the fifth-grader, walking around with a clipboard, keeping up with everybody at the mansion, making sure that they were doing right. Well, anything else you want to mention before we go off?
(Gov. Reeves) I would just thank you for, for the work that you’re doing at the Department of Transportation. It’s really great when the legislative branch and the executive branch and the Department of Transportation can sit down and work through issues, work through challenges, actually solve the challenges of the day, throw the politics out the door and just really do good things for the people of Mississippi.
And I think that’s something over the last year and a half, we’ve really had a good working relationship. And, and really all try to pull in the same direction. It’s a heck of a lot easier when everyone’s pulling in the same direction than when you have 60% of the people pulling one way and 40% pulling on the other. You don’t get nearly as far that way. And so, um, we’ve got a lot of good things going on in Mississippi right now.
We’ve got challenges that we have to address, and that we will. But, clearly, from an economic standpoint, our economy is on fire. We’re investing more in infrastructure in Mississippi - whether it’s water, sewer, roads, bridges, etc. - than we’ve ever invested in the history of our state. We’re actually fixing some of these problems that have persisted for hundreds of years, and that’s something that we ought to all be proud of. All we ought to double it down, and say, “You know what? We’re going to keep doing that. We’re going to keep working on that.” And that’s certainly what I’m committed to.
(Brad White) Well, as Governor Barbour used to say, “This is a team sport.” We appreciate your leadership on the team and allowing us to be a part of it. I want to thank everyone for tuning in to The Extra Mile podcast. Remember that you can watch and listen to episodes by visiting mdot.com/theextramile. You can follow us on social media at MississippiDOT. And for more information on Governor Reeves, you can go to @tatereeves. And as always, remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways. Thank you, Governor.
(Gov. Reeves) Thank you.