Tobacco News and Interesting Information

Sound familiar? It should since the tug-of-war over raising Mississippi's 18-cents-a-pack tax has been ongoing for years. But now the dynamics have changed.

In the past, it's been a battle of wills between Republican Gov. Haley Barbour and lawmakers who supported an increase. Barbour adamantly opposed a tax hike. He ran for governor on a promise of not raising anybody's taxes.

Barbour - who used to lobby for tobacco companies in Washington - vetoed legislation in 2006 that would have raised Mississippi's cigarette tax and reduced the grocery tax. The next year, one of his allies, Republican Tommy Robertson, who at the time was the Senate Finance chairman, let similar legislation die in his committee.

During the 2008 regular session - and again in a marathon special session - the House struggled mightily to persuade the Senate to pass a cigarette tax to generate money for Medicaid. About a fourth of all Mississippians receive health care coverage under the program, funded by state and federal dollars. The program had a nearly $90 million budget hole.

Even then, Barbour balked at a cigarette tax. He proposed a hospital tax instead, which ruffled hospital executives who banded together to simultaneously support the cigarette tax and challenge Barbour's proposal.

The messy situation cleared itself after Medicaid staff discovered an accounting error that led to a $92 million refund from the federal government.