OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — The county has new leadership in the road department as supervisors started 2023 ushering out the old guard.
After an executive session at Tuesday’s board meeting, supervisors appointed Keith Thompson as interim road manager and Mark Vaughn as interim assistant road manager. This came after an open session vote to dismiss road manager Hal Baggett, who had led the department since July 2017.
Thompson was previously an office technician with the road department, while Vaughn was a foreman at one of its district shops, District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer said.
Baggett’s tenure with the road department was riddled with lawsuits filed by current and former employees. Trainer requested in February that Baggett resign and has since publicly questioned his leadership skills and ability to manage employees.
Still, on Wednesday, District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams moved to reappoint Baggett, with a second from District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller. The motion failed 3-2 as Trainer, District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery and District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard opposed.
“From a personal standpoint, I am satisfied that he performed to the best of his ability, but there were just some things that we felt like we could perhaps do a little bit differently, do a little bit better,” Trainer, who was appointed board president for 2023, told The Dispatch after the meeting. “It wasn’t any one particular thing, because dealing with something like that is always a very difficult deal to do when you relieve somebody of their duties. … It’s just observing how things were going over a period of time, and of course, I was probably one of the main proponents of him being in that position from the beginning.”
Miller, whose term as board president ended Tuesday, said Baggett’s dismissal came without proper justification.
“I voted (the way I did) because this power play has been in the works for quite some time to get rid of Mr. Baggett,” Miller told The Dispatch. “… Supervisor Trainer had publicly requested Baggett to step down in a prior meeting but didn’t have the votes. I was surprised they got it done today with no documentation to justify firing Baggett.”
Trainer said the county will soon advertise for a permanent road manager.
“I’m excited about the potential of where we can go in the road department,” he said. “Right now, we just felt it was time to go in a different direction.”
When contacted Wednesday by The Dispatch, Baggett declined to comment on his dismissal.
Supes meet with road employees improperly
At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Trainer announced he intended to meet with the road department employees to personally announce the changes and “reassure them” regarding the department’s direction.
That meeting happened at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday in the county’s safe room, with Howard and Williams also attending — which represented a quorum of the board of supervisors, meaning it should have been open to the public under the state’s Open Meetings Act.
Trainer told The Dispatch no action was taken at the Wednesday session.
“The only thing we did was come in there together … and relay to them a vote of confidence,” he said.
County officials, including board attorney Rob Roberson, admitted to The Dispatch the county did not post any public notice for the Wednesday morning meeting. Roberson conceded it should have.
“It would appear there was a mistake in the procedure,” he said. “Obviously we need to have a conversation about the Sunshine laws.”
Roberson said he plans to meet with supervisors to discuss how and when to post notice for public meetings to avoid future problems.
This is the second time in less than a year supervisors were caught meeting improperly. The Dispatch filed an open meetings complaint against the board with the Mississippi Ethics Commission in February after four supervisors met in separate groups of two with engineers planning lake dam repairs. The media was allowed to attend upon request, but the meetings were not posted or open to the general public.
The ethics commission ruled in November those supervisors violated the Open Meetings Act by creating a “rolling quorum.”
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