The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi must stop spending its $20 million annual endowment until the state Supreme Court decides if the group's funding mechanism is legal, the high court has ruled.

The Associated Press reported Oct. 19 that the court ruled 6-1 to stop the group from using money earmarked from the state's share of the 1998 nationwide tobacco settlement. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, an ally of the tobacco industry, has waged a long campaign to cut the Partnership off from its main funding source and redirect the settlement money into state coffers.

"The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi is deeply disappointed by the ruling," said spokeswoman Sharon Garrison. "While the court's order does allow the Partnership to keep and use funds from sources other than the state's annual tobacco settlement payments, that amount of money is only enough to fund a fraction of the Partnership's programs."

Jackson County Chancellor Jaye Bradley ruled last month that the Partnership does not have to return any of the money it received in the past 5-1/2 years, a ruling that Barbour, the state's Medicaid department, and the Mississippi Health Care Trust Fund appealed to the state Supreme Court. "The Mississippi Supreme Court's ruling is encouraging for those of us who believe it is unconstitutional for a local court to give state taxpayers money to a private organization," Barbour said. "State taxpayers money can only be spent through the legislative process."

House Public Health Committee Chairman Steve Holland (D-Plantersville) said he was "sickened and disappointed that the governor ... has now destroyed what the Centers for Disease Control has said was the model tobacco-cessation program in America. Every citizen in the State of Mississippi who believes in a strong public-health program should rise up in arms against this tyrant, who obviously to this day remains 100 percent beholden to Big Tobacco."