Some authority to question school budgets in Mississippi should be extended to county boards of supervisors, state Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, said Wednesday.

Talking to officials gathered for the Mississippi Association of Supervisors’ Minority Caucus annual seminar, Flaggs said county officials need a stronger say in education matters.

&#8220I believe you ought to have veto power over school budgets,” Flaggs said, adding such authority would afford supervisors greater ability to &#8220hold school boards accountable.”

Supervisors do not have any power over any item in a school district’s budget. Their statutory duty is to set a tax levy sufficient to raise the local portion of a school board’s budget.

Year-to-year, a school district can request increased funding up to 4 percent without triggering a referendum, said Superintendent James Price of the Vicksburg Warren School District this morning. Requests in excess of 4 percent up to 7 percent would trigger a public vote, Price added. No one-year increase can exceed 7 percent.

Public schools are funded from multiple sources with most dollars coming from state allocations. Property taxes collected from real estate, personal property and vehicles provide a smaller portion and the rest comes from federal sources, summer tuition and sales of meals.

Annual tax increases imposed by some of the state’s districts have not been an issue here, where school managers have kept local rates level, relying instead on gaming taxes and higher local valuations to increase local funding.

The countywide assessment for the Vicksburg Warren School District was raised in 2005, when millage rates were also hiked by supervisors to pay for equipment in law enforcement and public safety.

The district adopted a record $73 million budget for 2006-07, stemming in part from the tax hike that year and increased state allocations.

Elsewhere in the state, supervisors have felt trapped – being required to increase tax rates for schools almost annually due to shortfalls in state allocations, most notably not fully funding the Mississippi Adequate Education Act. In the coming year, MAEP is fully funded for only the second time since it was enacted in 1997.

The caucus is having a three-day session at the Hampton Inn on Clay Street featuring speakers through today. It is the organization’s first in Vicksburg.

Two funding priorities exist for the Legislature after this election year, Flaggs said.

One, keeping MAEP funded. &#8220Education ties all of government together,” Flaggs said.

The other is re-establishing a burn center, most likely at University Medical Center in Jackson.

&#8220Every state that wants to be first and be competitive ought to have a burn and trauma center,” Flaggs said. UMC has the state’s only Level One trauma unit.

Supervisors were also updated on several bills introduced during this year’s legislative session.

Legislation passed that will reimburse counties for state inmates held in county jails pending parole or an initial hearing.

Efforts to improve reimbursement of state inmate medical costs to the counties &#8220got real close,” said Joel Yelverton, MAS assistant executive director of government relations.

&#8220It’s a real serious issue,” Yelverton said, adding the organization is lobbying for reimbursement on actual medical costs.

Another bill passed that protects the Office of State Aid Road Construction’s funding from being directed anywhere else by the state treasurer or the Department of Finance and Administration.

Yelverton said the bill prevents diversions of money from the fund that pays for road repairs on the highways the state maintains. The fund was stripped of $18 million during the state’s last budget crisis in 2004.

The state supervisors association was formed in 1928 and serves as a nonpartisan forum for supervisors statewide to share information on policy issues.

It includes all 410 elected supervisors in Mississippi’s 82 counties. Thirty-six are members of the minority caucus.