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Stimulus deadline breathes down on Mississippi county

October 26, 2009 —

Expect to see this story repeated across the region as the deadlines imposed in the federal stimulus package begin to draw close: A Hinds County (Jackson) supervisor is warning that $1.6 million in road repaving money could be lost if the county doesn't finish two required audits in the next three weeks.

Other county officials have taken issue with Supervisor Phil Fischer's assessment, but a Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) official said the deadline for reporting the financial information is "relatively firm."

In this case the deadline is one imposed by MDOT on 40 local governments receiving a total of $44 million in transportation funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But the stimulus bill, which was intended to pump money into the economy quickly to thwart the recession, has created a chain of deadlines. As the year nears an end, the clock is beginning to run short at many levels of government.

-- Alabama is the latest state where officials have begun to look longingly at the tax revenues that could be gained by making online retailers play by the same rules as their landlocked competitors.  According to a recent study, the state and its local governments stand to lose $104 million this year from online retailers who don't collect sales taxes.

-- Kentucky's Legislative Research Commission is estimating the General Fund contribution to public employee retirement plans will need to be increased by $74 million in the next two-year budget period. The state's retirement systems were facing a $30 billion shortfall even before the economy hit the wall last year, said Retirement Systems Executive Director Mike Burnside.

-- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has until 5 p.m. Monday to supply the state Supreme Court with more information regarding his request that a preliminary ethics investigation into his travels not be released to the legislature.

-- Environmentalists have been warning for some time that alternatives need to be found for those water-guzzling St. Augustine and Bermuda grass lawns which are common across the South. Last summer's devastating drought in Texas has spurred some innovations in that field. Working with a two-year grant from Wal-Mart researchers at the  Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center of The University of Texas at Austin say they've had promising results with a blend of seven species of native, thin-bladed grasses. 

Not only is the new combination more drought-resistant, they say, but it establishes more quickly than Bermuda, suppresses weeds more effectively and requires less mowing.