OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — With Oktibbeha County attempting to sell OCH Regional Medical Center for the second time in seven years, the clock is once again ticking for any petitions opposing privatization to force the issue to the ballot.
So far, county officials have not heard much about a petition forming. County board of supervisors attorney Rob Roberson told The Dispatch Thursday he hasn’t heard about any “serious” petitions going around to oppose the sale or lease of the hospital.
“I haven’t heard of a serious presentation to get it on the ballot,” Roberson said.
Deputy Circuit Clerk Sheryl Elmore told The Dispatch the same on Tuesday.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t get some, but I have not heard anything,” Elmore said.
In 2017, when supervisors last attempted to offload OCH Regional Medical Center, Oktibbeha County citizens opposed it, submitting a petition and forcing a referendum that ultimately led to the hospital remaining public at that time.
In late August, Raymond James Financial Services presented its findings from a commissioned “due diligence study” to the board of supervisors. Based on that report – which included information on the hospital’s income, debt profile, capital spending, utilization, nursing staff and retention and revenue leakage – it recommended the county sell the hospital.
The county then held its public hearing Sept. 19, where Mississippi State University and the Greater Starkville Development Partnership endorsed the sale, though a few hospital staff members expressed concerns about how the transition could affect patients and staff.
During the hearing, one citizen, John Fortuin, was collecting names from attendees, but he noted to The Dispatch at that time that he was not circulating a formal petition.
State law says in order to push the sale or lease to a ballot referendum, at least 1,500 registered voters in the county must sign a petition that is submitted to the circuit clerk’s office no more than 21 days after the public hearing, making the deadline for submitting a petition opposing the hospital sale 5 p.m. Oct. 10.
Elizabeth Jonson, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office, told The Dispatch in an email that the petition would need to contain language expressing what the petition is seeking on each page, which could not mislead the person reading it to sign it, based on previous rulings by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
“If a petition to call for an election does not have specific form or language requirements set forth in (state law), then it must at least follow the requirements set forth by the Mississippi Supreme Court,” Jonson wrote.
Elmore said anyone hoping to collect signatures for a petition would need to get signatures of registered voters only from Oktibbeha County. A petition signature must include the person’s legal name, she said, so she can verify the signatures.
“Each name, I pull them up and make sure they’re an active voter and at the address they say they are,” Elmore said. “If not, I change their address for petition and go on to the next. If they’re not a registered voter or they’ve been purged or inactive, I don’t put them in.”
OCH Trustee Yulanda Haddix said the hospital board discussed the possibility of starting a petition opposing the sale or lease of the hospital during its Tuesday meeting, but it decided not to move forward with that process.
Haddix said she did not know of any citizen-led petitions, besides Fortuin’s efforts at the public hearing. Haddix said she is supporting the “team decision” to not start one as a trustee, but if she saw a petition, she would sign it based on her personal convictions on the community’s involvement in the hospital.
“I’m gladly in favor of a petition, I feel, because I think we need to find doctors who want to come to our community and truly want to serve in a small community,” Haddix said. “And there are doctors out here who want to do that. We have doctors like that.”
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