By Bobby Harrison
Daily Journal Jackson Bureau
JACKSON – The Senate quickly passed Monday morning legislation to allow the counties of Lee and Itawamba to construct county jails outside of their municipal seats of government.
The bills, which passed the House earlier, now go to Gov. Phil Bryant, who is likely to sign them into law.
On Monday, there was simply a brief explanation of the bills to the full Senate by Local and Private Committee Chair Gary Jackson, R-French Camp. No senators voted against the bill.
State law mandates that county jails be located within the seat of government. Specific counties can request local and private legislation to be exempt from the law. The Lee County supervisors requested the local and private bill to construct a jail outside of Tupelo. Itawamba requested to be allowed to build a jail outside the town of Fulton.
Both boards of supervisors, though, said they had made no final decision on whether to build outside of the county seat, but just wanted that option.
In the case of the Lee County jail the issue became a bit controversial.
In the House, where it passed earlier this session, Rep. Shane Aguirre, R-Tupelo, voted against it, although he did not try to defeat the measure, which he might have been able to do. Often what is known as local and private legislation does not advance in the process if the members of the delegation representing the impacted local government are not in unanimous support.
Aguirre’s opposition and the slow movement of the bill in the Senate led to speculation by some Lee County officials that Tupelo officials were trying to kill the bill.
Tupelo officials denied those allegations, although Aguirre did say he believed the jail should remain in Tupelo where he said land is available near the current jail.
For whatever reason, the bill involving the Lee County jail did come under unusually tough scrutiny in the Corrections Committee when it was considered there. But in the end, during the final week of the session, both bills passed and are heading to the desk of the governor.
Officials in both Lee and Itawamba say a new jail is needed to deal with overcrowding.
bobby.harrison@journalinc.com
Twitter: @BobbyHarrison9