Legislative Action and Inaction

For four consecutive legislative sessions, MFBF urged legislators to protect homeowners and landowners from such confiscation, but to no avail. The 2009 Legislature passed H.B. 803, which prohibited the taking of private property under the guise of economic development for private development or business. Both House and Senate passed the bill, but the Governor vetoed it. The House overrode his veto, but the Senate failed to override the veto by a handful of votes. At the first of several 2009 special sessions, a bill supported by the administration, but with much less reform, was not even brought out of committee. So once again, the more things change, the more they remain the same, and eminent domain reform in Mississippi was again thwarted.

An advantage of constitutional amendment instead of a statute is that, if enacted, it would be much more difficult to change because that would require a 2/3 vote of each house plus approval by the voters, another constitutional amendment. Of all previous citizen’ initiatives only one has gotten on the ballot, term limits, and it failed.