District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard said he will call upon fellow supervisors to call for a referendum on the fate of OCH Regional Medical Center at the county’s June 5 board meeting.
Now that the county has received a petition of 1,500 vetted residents calling for an up-or-down vote on whether or not to explore a potential hospital transaction, Howard said supervisors should honor the will of the taxpayers and hold an election as soon as possible.
A previous opinion issued by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s office stated Oktibbeha County could hold a referendum question in tandem with November’s special election to fill the chancery clerk’s seat, but Howard said such an election could be held at an earlier date.
Howard did not specify when exactly he thought the referendum should be held.
“The taxpayers have, by law, done the things they needed to do to request an election. I think the thing to do now is set an election date, because that’s what they have said. It’s time to see what the will of the people is. That’s the best and most wise thing to do,” he said. “We work for the people. We shouldn’t continue forward with this process and disregard what the voters have asked for.”
Other supervisors
It is not yet known how the board’s other four supervisors will vote if the issue is pushed next month, but District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery, District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer and District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller have all, at one point or another, either publicly backed an election or said they were sure a potential hospital transaction would be decided at the polls.
State statute outlining the process of how registered voters can call for an election on a hospital transaction does not explicitly state how long a governing body has to broach the issue or when such an election should be held.
Trainer said the board has flexibility with setting an election, and said he’ll deal with the issue once it’s presented for business.
Previously, Trainer questioned the validity of the pro-OCH petition, saying it was his opinion that signatures collected before the May publish date for the request for proposals for the hospital should not be counted toward the 1,500 threshold to hold an election.
“This is a very emotional issue for people in the county. With setting an election, you have a lot of flexibility. Some may want to do it at the soonest available date, while some may want it later on in the year. If one of the supervisors wants to put it on the agenda, we’ll deal with it then,” he said.
RFP timeline
In that same June meeting, hospital consultant Ted Woodrell and Butler Snow attorney Johnny Healy are expected to advise supervisors to push back dates with its RFP since the process of uploading three years’ worth of information to a virtual data room for respondents is taking longer than expected.
The RFP previously set a June 12 deadline for questions from respondents based on the data and also set a July 10 for bids.
Earlier this month, OCH trustees and Chief Executive Officer Richard Hilton penned a letter to Trainer last week saying the hospital is not expected to be able to provide due diligence information for respondents by then and would not provide sensitive information about its finances before a referendum to decide the entire issue is held.
Both Healy and Woodrell did not disclose potential new dates for questions and the RFP’s overall deadline but did say a Tuesday meeting with OCH officials helped both sides have a clearer picture of what’s expected in and the timeline for uploading data.
“We’d like respondents to have at least a month to look at information, and there’s just not enough time to be fair to everyone with the dates we have right now,” Healy said. “As things evolve, some adjustments to the RFP will have to come. What those are and how many there will be are both still to be seen.”
The adjustment in the RFP’s timeline comes after both Healy and Woodrell held a conference call with OCH officials Tuesday to discuss the due diligence request and uploads to the virtual data room.
Both Healy and Woodrell described the two-hour discussion as productive, but Woodrell said both sides must still work to resolve lingering issues.
“We are getting information and have added quite a bit of material to the data room, but there is still a lot of data to be uploaded. We’re working on that,” Woodrell said. “We’re getting cooperation, and I feel like we’re making headway. But there’s still a lot of work to be done, and there’s no question that this is a big task.”
Woodrell says OCH is already receiving interest from potential in — and out-of-state bidders only two weeks into the RFP process. He would not disclose how many companies or systems have shown an interest in the hospital.
A call to Hilton went unreturned Friday.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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