Coahoma County; provide trustees of county reserve and trust fund may use portion of fund to repair county owned "Federal Building".
HB 1650 amends the local and private law governing the Coahoma County Reserve and Trust Fund. The bill keeps the existing structure of the fund, which is built from lease proceeds tied to the Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center and invested by the Coahoma County Board of Supervisors acting as trustees, but adds a new authorized use of the corpus. Under the bill, the trustees may, by majority vote, withdraw up to $4 million from the corpus to pay for equipment, installation, construction, improvements, permits, inspections, and related professional services for the county-owned building known as the "Federal Building" in Clarksdale. The bill also retains and restates existing authority for annual earnings distributions and other limited corpus withdrawals, including emergency use and a prior lease-payment shortfall provision.
The bill further changes the fund’s distribution rules if any corpus is withdrawn. In that event, annual disbursements from the earnings component are limited so that no more than 50% may be distributed, while at least 50% must be retained and repaid into the corpus until the fund is restored to its pre-withdrawal level. The bill also preserves the requirement for annual reporting and audit access, and it continues to allow the fund to be dissolved if the balance ever reaches zero.
In practical terms, the bill affects a single local trust arrangement in Coahoma County rather than statewide law generally. It amends the special act creating the reserve and trust fund, expands the county’s flexibility to use trust assets for a capital project, and imposes a repayment mechanism to rebuild the corpus after any withdrawal. The measure is narrowly targeted to the county’s financial management and the renovation or equipping of the Federal Building.
The overall sentiment around the bill appears strongly favorable. The House passed it 113-0, and the Senate passed it 51-0, indicating unanimous support in both chambers. The bill’s caption and text suggest it was viewed as a practical local finance measure intended to support county infrastructure and public use of an existing county-owned building.
There is little visible contention in the available record. The main policy choice is whether the county should be allowed to tap trust principal for the Federal Building project and, if so, how much earnings should be retained to replenish the corpus. The bill resolves that concern by limiting the withdrawal to a specified amount and requiring future earnings to rebuild the fund before normal distributions resume.
HB 1650 amends Chapter 912 of the Local and Private Laws of 2013, as previously amended, to expand the permissible uses of the Coahoma County Reserve and Trust Fund. It authorizes the Coahoma County Board of Supervisors, acting as trustees, to withdraw up to $4 million from the corpus for the Federal Building project and imposes a mandatory earnings-retention and corpus-repayment rule after any principal withdrawal. The bill therefore changes the governing special law for this one county trust, but does not broadly alter general Mississippi law outside this local act.
The bill appears to have been received positively and without recorded opposition. It passed the House 113-0 and the Senate 51-0, suggesting broad bipartisan agreement or at least no visible resistance. The absence of committee transcript material limits deeper insight, but the unanimous votes indicate the measure was viewed as a straightforward local funding and facilities bill.
The only apparent point of contention is the policy tradeoff between preserving trust principal and allowing its use for a county building project. The bill addresses that concern by capping the withdrawal amount, requiring a majority vote of the trustees, and mandating that at least half of future earnings be retained and repaid to the corpus until the fund is restored. No specific opposition, amendments, or disputed testimony appears in the available record.