By Staff
The Star: Can you give us another example of how state spending has been out of control besides children's health insurance and Medicaid?
Tyner: The Medicaid budget is out of control. It simply grew too fast. That's the biggest thing that comes to mind.
I would like to see us use more technology and streamline government. I think we should do away with any department that really has no purpose, and I don't have any particular ones in mind at the moment. There has to be some because we've not cut anything in so long. It's just like when Ronald Reagan took office. He started cutting out programs left and right and I think that's a good idea.
The Star: How do you know there is anything to streamline?
Tyner: In any business I've ever been involved in we've always, from year-to-year, found ways to streamline every process we do, so I would be shocked if in government there weren't something. It's not a business, but it can be treated like one.
The bottom line is to provide the basic services that are necessary: infrastructure, roads, minimum health care, inoculations, those kinds of things. Let's provide the basic things that we need as a society that government can do best and then the other things, let's leave those back to our churches and synagogues.
Let's quit taxing ourselves so much, expecting the government to dole out all these benefits.
The Star: What are your thoughts on funding public education, K-12, junior colleges and institutions of higher learning up front at the start of the legislative session and using what's left over to fund everything else?
Tyner: I don't have any problems with it at all. I was asked by the education association whether I would be willing to give 62 percent of the budget immediately to education. I'm not. If we have a banner year and things are going great, that doesn't mean that the educational system needs more money.
The Star: Would you stand in the way of any expansion of the gambling industry in Mississippi?
Tyner: I will not as governor sign a compact for any other Indian lands that are going to be turned into casinos.
I think gambling is bad for the moral fabric of our state and our country. I think we are falling down a slippery slope every year that we continue to rely on revenue from gambling. I do not like it and I will veto any expansion of it.
I don't know that we have any power to take it away but I would like to see it out of Mississippi. I do not believe overall that it is a positive for Mississippi, even from a financial sense. I know there's several hundred million dollars a year currently generated from gambling that's going into our treasury. I know that at least in the communities where there is gambling they have enjoyed some revenue and built some new buildings, even some new schools.
I do not believe that the net gain of those new facilities is worth the price that we're paying. It destroys lives. It is not good for us.