Last week legislators came to the capitol to begin the 2021 session. This year’s session is expected to last 90 days and to end or adjourn on April 4th (also known as sine die).
We’ll be watching (virtually) throughout the session, and you can do so as well. Both the House webcast and the Senate webcast are streamed live on the Mississippi Legislature Youtube channel. Some of the Senate committee meetings are also streamed on the channel live. All of the meetings and sessions are available if you want to watch them when it’s convenient for you (they are archived on the Youtube channel).
If you would like to follow the session more closely, go to the Mississippi Legislature website, which has great information on legislators, legislation and House and Senate committees, calendars and schedules. You can find information about any legislator, follow a specific bill’s progress during the session or download it.
To find a specific bill from this year’s session, use the legislation tab on the website, and go to the bottom of the page to click on “select a measure.” Then choose HB (for house bill) or SB (for senate bill) and fill in the number of the bill. If you don’t know the number of a bill you can also search by text, by committee or by legislator.
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One bill that we are watching closely is SB 2021, which makes some adjustments to last year’s bill (SB 2610-2020 session), which established the position of Coordinator of Mental Health Accessibility. SB 2021 moves the position to the Department of Finance and Administration and exempts any contracts from the rules of the contract review board. This bill was double referred (sent to two committees) and was passed out of both committees and transmitted to the House on January 11th. If the House passes this bill as well it will go into effect after its passage.
