The Joint Legislative Budget Committee is a joint standing committee of the Mississippi State Legislature. The budget committee is made up of six senators and six representatives who are all committee chairs or vice chairs. With the assistance of the Legislative Budget Office (LBO), the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) develops the Legislative Budget Recommendation (LBR) that is submitted to the Mississippi Legislature.
The budget process starts in June of each year, when agencies begin entering their next fiscal year budget request. In July they submit their Five-year Strategic Plan (agency five-year strategic plans for 2023-27 can be reviewed here) to the budget office. Each agency’s budget requests are reviewed and approved by the LBO budget analyst sometime in August. The Department of Mental Health’s five-year strategic plan for 2023-28 can be reviewed here.
The committee then sets a public hearing date to hear each agency’s budget requests and also to hear the State revenue estimates. This year that budget hearing date is September 24th, from 8:30 to 4:30 pm, on the first floor of the Woolfolk Building, and this is the announced schedule for the budget hearing.
The hearing will be live-streamed here. We encourage you to listen to the hearing and look through the strategic plans of the agencies that are most relevant to your child and family.
After this hearing, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee will meet in November to consider the Legislative Budget Recommendation (LBR) and to adopt the latest State revenue projections, and the following month it will meet to adopt the Legislative Budget Recommendation (LBR). The Budget Recommendation Memorandum and Legislative Budget Book are then published.
Finally, the appropriations bills for each of the agencies are discussed and passed during the following year’s legislative session. The State of Mississippi fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30.
