During a campaign stop Friday in Greenwood to announce his bid for lieutenant governor, Delbert Hosemann offered some scathing criticism of the leadership of Greenwood’s hospital.
“I’ve visited with your doctors here. Some of them have children that they can’t convince to come back to practice here,” said Hosemann to a standing-room crowd of about 90 in the piping fabrication shop at Upchurch Plumbing.
Hosemann, 71, who has served three terms as secretary of state, has qualified to replace Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, a fellow Republican who has announced his candidacy for governor. State Rep. Jay Hughes of Oxford has filed on the Democratic side for lieutenant governor. The qualifying deadline is March 1.
Hosemann’s criticism of the Greenwood Leflore Hospital Board came in a response to a question of whether he would support expanding Medicaid to more low-income residents of the state.
Mississippi is one of only 14 states that has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act because of opposition from the state’s Republican leaders.
Although Hosemann said he was in favor of expanding health-care coverage if it can be done, as he claims some states have, with almost no state government expense, he’s not for propping up hospitals financially that have become dysfunctional.
“We can’t subsidize an inefficient system,” he said.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital has suffered multimillion-dollar losses its past three budget years, although hospital officials reported a small profit in November, the most recent month reported.
Hosemann was particularly critical of the hospital board’s conduct at an August meeting that drew some 200 residents who were angered over the commissioners’ refusal to affiliate with the University of Mississippi Medical Center despite the endorsement of the Greenwood hospital’s medical staff. The board declined to respond to the citizens’ concerns and instead went into executive session and ordered the room cleared.
“Now you all had a very contentious board meeting here in which some of the public was excluded in executive things,” Hosemann told the audience gathered for Friday’s kickoff remarks. “That’s a bad sign about your hospital.”
Sammy Foster, the hospital board’s chairman, who was not in attendance at the event, declined afterward to comment on Hosemann’s criticism.
Hosemann said he had visited other rural hospitals in Mississipi, including North Sunflower Medical Center in Ruleville, that appeared to be operating more smoothly than Greenwood’s.
“Ruleville works. Greenwood ought to work,” he said.
“Our community wants a working hospital. Is it a board problem? Do we need to change the board?”
On another topic high on the minds of many in the audience — the declining condition of Mississippi’s roads and bridges — Hosemann said he understands that more needs to be done to shore up the state’s transportation infrastructure but that he perceives little support in the Legislature for raising the fuel tax. The tax, which is 18.4 cents per gallon, has not been increased since 1987.
During a special session of the Legislature last year, lawmakers approved a $250 million bond issue for emergency repairs and agreed to devote proceeds from a future state lottery to roads and bridges. Transportation officials, however, have said the money is a fraction of what’s needed.
As lieutenant governor, Reeves has opposed an increase in the fuel tax. Hosemann said that if he is elected, he would let senators vote on the measure if they so desired and he would also support putting a gas-tax increase to a popular vote. He said he would not, however, personally advocate for an increase.
That hedging disappointed some in the audience.
“I can’t understand why the Legislature won’t step up and raise the gas tax when 90 percent of the businesses that are paying the tax are for it to get our road system back and going,” said Kenneth Thompson, a Greenwood builder.
“That little ol’ Band-Aid they put on it during the special session isn’t going to fill the potholes.”
Walton Gresham, president of Indianola-based Gresham Petroleum Co. and a longtime supporter of raising the fuel tax, declined to criticize Hosemann, whose introduction he handled a half-hour earlier.
“I’m going to be a team player,” Gresham said. “Delbert is a hell of a lot smarter than I am. I yield to him ... and how he gets it done.”
Hosemann said his major emphasis in office will be on increasing the skills of Mississippi’s work force by improving its education system. He said he wants to see teacher salaries rise annually, not just in election years, an obvious reference to the expectation that lawmakers will approve a pay hike for educators this year.
“Teacher salaries will go up every year that I’m in office,” he pledged.
Hosemann touted the work he did to implement the state’s voter ID law free of litigation, to automate how documents are filed with the Secretary of State’s Office, and to negotiate fair-market leases on the state’s 16th Section land, the proceeds of which go to public schools.
He said he made some enemies along the way. He cited one 16th Section lease that he negotiated up from $3 to $8 per acre in Carroll County.
“The word came back to me through another friend of mine in Carroll County, ‘They said there wasn’t enough orange for you to hunt in Carroll County.’
“So I don’t deer hunt in Carroll County. I’ve really never been back,” Hosemann said jokingly.
•Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com. Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
