Hattiesburg
Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker is focused on several legislative priorities for the 2025 session, including efforts to extend leases on 16th Section land along Broadway Drive and West Pine Street — once a bustling corridor in the city.
Local school districts earn income from 16th Section public trust lands, which are managed and leased by school boards for various purposes. Barker explained many of the 99-year leases on this land are nearing their end, creating challenges for redevelopment.
“A lot of those leases have 20, 21 years left on them. Well, if you’re a developer trying to invest in Broadway/West Pine, where the bulk of the land is 16th Section land, it’s hard to get financing when a bank looks at your lease terms and realizes you only have 20 years left and what’s going to happen to that afterward,” Barker said.
He noted that proposed legislation, championed by Republicans Rep. Missy McGee in the House and Sen. Chris Johnson in the Senate, would allow local school boards to extend these leases for an additional 25 years — an effort that failed to pass the Senate in 2024.
The Hattiesburg City Council also requested a four-year extension of the city’s 1% tax on hotel and motel stays and restaurant sales, which funds city-wide parks and recreation projects as well as the renovation of Reed Green Coliseum, a multipurpose arena at the University of Southern Mississippi.
As chair of the Mississippi Municipal League Legislative Committee, Barker is monitoring tax reform discussions, including proposals to eliminate the state income tax and reduce the grocery tax. While he sees potential benefits for residents, he warns that municipalities could face revenue losses without replacement funding. Currently, Mississippi has a 7% sales tax on groceries, and the state remits 18.5% of that back to municipalities.
Barker said he is paying close attention to potential changes to the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi (PERS), a recurring topic of concern for municipalities.
“Last year, the Legislature took a big step for us in limiting the amount of increases planned on the employer contribution, because again, we have to pay a certain percentage for every city employee that we have — police, fire, public works, everything,” Barker said. “If you start increasing that too much, that puts a damper on what we can do with those resources to pave streets and do other projects.”
The mayor highlighted the importance of flexibility in city budgets, particularly as PERS considers a fifth-tier retirement system to strengthen its long-term viability. Barker credited the incremental increases in contribution rates for enabling the city to offer competitive starting salaries for police officers and firefighters.
“Public safety is the biggest responsibility of a local government, and so in recent years, we’ve been able to raise our starting salary to $50,000 a year, and we were the first in south Mississippi to do that. That’s helped us bring in and try to fully staff our police department,” Barker said. “The challenge we have now is that all of our neighboring cities and counties are doing the same thing, and so we have to figure out how we’re going to get to the next level.”
Barker supports Medicaid expansion, which would extend health coverage to adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $20,783 annually for an individual in 2024.
“We’d love to see the House and Senate come to some kind of agreement that could at least go to the federal government to see if they’ll approve — that would provide health coverage for low-income Mississippians, especially those who are working,” Barker said. “That’s a very big issue for us when you’ve got 300,000, 400,000 people out there who don’t have access to health care because there’s no pay source for them.”
Another priority for Barker is securing additional funding to help clean up dilapidated properties, including state-owned lots.
“There are state-owned lots in the city of Hattiesburg that are not kept up. We have to take on that cost ourselves,” Barker said. “We’d love to see the Legislature give us some additional funding to help fund the cleanup that we have to do often with private contractors when a lot is overgrown.”
Petal
Petal Mayor Tony Ducker is closely monitoring discussions about the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi (PERS) as legislators tackle a packed agenda this session.
For years, concerns have loomed over the fiscal stability of PERS. In the 2024 session, the state Legislature passed a bill rescinding the system’s governing board’s authority to increase the contribution rate imposed on state and local governments. The change came after the board proposed a 5% increase over three years to cover program costs. Legislators ultimately approved a phased-in approach, mandating a 0.5% annual increase over five years.
Ducker said the compromise has provided Petal with “firm footing,” allowing time to adjust the city’s budget to accommodate the incremental increases.
“We pay a premium when it comes to our retirement system, so we want to make sure it’s something that we can keep the promises, especially to the ones who are already retired, and those that may in the next 5 to 10 years retire,” Ducker said.
The mayor also voiced concern over the potential for “brain drain” in smaller cities like Petal within the next 5-7 years.
“There are people in their 50s, maybe early 60s, that are getting ready to retire, and it just doesn’t make economic sense for them to stay on,” Ducker said. “So, I would love for the Legislature to look at something where we could retain some of our top talent and that they could do something that would make economic sense for the employee as well.”
Ducker noted that PERS remains a central issue.
“It’s a complicated issue, but it kind of comes back to the PERS issue. I’ve talked to a few folks about that, tried to see if there’s a way around it. It’s a big, big gorilla in the room, so to speak,” Ducker said.
Beyond PERS, Ducker highlighted the importance of internet sales tax revenue for cities like Petal. He explained that the state began allocating these funds to municipalities several years ago, providing Petal with about $900,000 annually. The city uses this revenue to enhance infrastructure, but Ducker believes the formula deserves another review.
“Obviously, I would assume they would take a look at that at some point to make sure that the numbers are still making sense. Because it seems more and more people every year are shopping more and more at home,” Ducker said.
While Ducker acknowledged the shift toward online shopping, he emphasized the importance of ensuring those tax dollars are reinvested in communities.
“We prefer you to go in a city — in a store, but it’s just a fact of life right now. For convenience or availability, people shop online. So, anything that the state can do to shove that money outside of Jackson and get it back to the people that are paying these taxes and allow it to make improvements in those areas is a big plus,” Ducker said.
Your Voice Matters!
We’re reaching out to mayors across our 10-county area to learn about their priorities for the 2025 legislative session. This is an ongoing series, and we want to hear from you! If there’s a specific topic you’d like us to ask your elected officials about, email us at rhcjcnews.com.