The news director for the Tupelo-based WTVA television station has filed an open meetings complaint against Lowndes County with the Mississippi Ethics Commission.
Steve Rogers filed the complaint last week, and an ethics commission spokesman confirmed to The Dispatch Friday the body had received it.
The complaint centers on discussions Rogers claims Lowndes supervisors, namely President Harry Sanders, had in private before hiring Clinton-based RF Outdoor Consulting to study the local parks system and the feasibility of the county splitting from the Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority to operate its own parks.
Supervisors hired the consulting firm in a public meeting on June 17 for $4,000, and after the study was complete, voted earlier this month to issue the city of Columbus the required one-year notice of intent to leave the jointly-run CLRA.
The complaint
In Rogers’ complaint, he alleges supervisors divided themselves into three groups of two — less than a quorum each but constituting a quorum when counted together — to have separate discussions about whether to hire a consultant.
The complaint said Sanders “organized a number of non-quorum gatherings with the apparent purpose of keeping the discussions from being held in public in order that the stages of the deliberative process be concealed from the public in violation of the Open Meetings Act.”
First, according to the complaint, Sanders and District 2 Supervisor Bill Brigham interviewed the consultant, then divided the duties of individually discussing the matter with the other supervisors before the hiring came to a public vote. The complaint also cites a letter Sanders wrote to Columbus Mayor Robert Smith before the June 17 meeting informing him the supervisors’ agenda would include discussion about whether to hire a parks consultant.
Sanders denies wrongdoing
In a phone interview with The Dispatch on Friday, Sanders admitted to many of the communications listed in the complaint but rejected the idea any of them violated the law.
He said he first obtained from former CLRA director Roger Short a list of possible consultants for a parks study. Then he and Brigham met in Louisville with representatives of the RF firm to gather more information. From there, he contacted District 3 Supervisor John Holliman and District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith, while Brigham contacted District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks, to “see if they had a problem putting the matter on the agenda.”
“We didn’t ask any of them how they were going to vote,” Sanders said.
‘Similarities’ to past rulings
Rogers said his complaint seeks to clarify previous Mississippi Ethics Commission rulings, specifically two from open meetings complaints The Dispatch filed against the city of Columbus.
The commission found violations in two occasions in 2014 when the mayor scheduled meetings with three councilmen each (less than a quorum of the six-person body) behind closed doors to discuss the same issue. Once, the separate meetings of three centered on an issue involving the Golden Triangle Development LINK. The other pair of non-quorum meetings resulted in a press release stating the city had decided to be its own contractor for Trotter Convention Center renovations.
A preliminary ethics commission finding states the mayor again violated Open Meetings Act in 2015 when he sent Sanders a letter saying he and the council had decided to operate a shooting range the city jointly funds with the county. The commission has recommended a $500 fine for Smith in that case.
The city is fighting the rulings in both cases.
Rogers told The Dispatch county discussions about the parks consultant seem similar to circumstances that led the newspaper to file complaints against the city, and he wants to make sure the rules for public bodies are “fair and clear.”
“These rulings affect every elected official in the state, so we just want to make sure everybody understands the playing field,” Rogers said. “To try to insinuate anyone did anything wrong is not our position, and to couch it that way would be wrong.”
Sanders said once supervisors receive a copy of Rogers’ complaint, the county would prepare to fight it. He also asserted he didn’t feel Rogers had much of a case.
“I think he’s grasping at straws,” Sanders said. “He’s trying to create the news rather than report the news.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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