NATCHEZ — Local legislators said budget shortfalls will dominate how the state legislature conducts its business this year, by forcing them to cut spending or raise certain taxes.

The area’s legislative delegation spoke at the Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce’s legislative breakfast Monday.

The legislative breakfast is a chamber event in which local legislators give a brief overview of the legislative session and answer any questions those present might have.

Sen. Bob Dearing said that in this year’s session, legislators won’t have to deal with a lot of different organizations lobbying for funding.

“It’s going to be an easy session because we don’t have any money,” Dearing said.

The state will likely have to use money from the rainy day fund to balance the budget, Dearing said.

The state currently has $360 million in the rainy day fund, and Rep. Sam Mims said the legislature should assume that the current recession will last for more than a couple of years and not spend half of the rainy day fund this fiscal year.

“We need to plan for the worst and hope for the best,” Mims said.

“We are definitely not immune to what is going on nationally, and unlike the federal government, we cannot print money.”

When the legislature encounters a budget shortfall like it is currently experiencing, it is time to step back and assess things, Sen. Kelvin Butler said.

“It makes us look back at things we have done in the past and ask, ‘What are we doing now?’”

Legislators are going to have to step back and reassess the role of state government, Mims said.

“Everyone is cutting expenses, and the state has to also,” he said. “We have to remember that these are your tax dollars.”

And that might mean cutting some projects and programs.

“The difficult approach is to step back and see if we are spending wisely,” Mims said. “The easy approach is to take unpopular taxes and raise them.”

Despite having to work with fewer funds, Dearing said he still has hope for the state’s finances.

“Mississippi has always been either up on a mountaintop or down in a valley,” Dearing said. “We are down in the valley, but at the end of the year we will have a balanced budget.”

To do that might mean the legislature will finally pass a long-debated increase in the cigarette tax, something Butler said he was comfortable saying would pass.

If the cigarette tax increase does pass, Dearing said he would like to see those monies — along with funds generated by a hospital bed tax — dedicated to Medicaid.

Other monies generated by the cigarette tax could be dedicated to replace funds cut from community colleges, Dearing said.

“It’s not fair (for students),” Dearing said. “Every time we cut funds, it’s like they get a tax increase.”

Rep. Robert Johnson said he would also like to see the tobacco tax raised to 50 cents a pack, what he said would be the regional average.

The current cigarette tax is 17 cents a pack.

“It is a tax that needs to be raised because it is a tax at a rate that is outdated,” Johnson said.

Where he differed from Dearing, however, was that Johnson wanted to earmark all of the funds generated by the tobacco tax for hospitals.

“If people get sick, they shouldn’t have to drive 100 miles,” he said.

Johnson said he wants the tobacco tax earmarked because of past state experience with the gaming taxes.

“(The gaming tax) was originally about education, and education gets the money it needs, but the monies are in the general fund.”

Johnson also talked about legislation he planned to introduce, one piece that would require voters to present identification for early voting and another one that would require the state to consider Mississippi-based companies first when awarding contracts.