OKTIBBEHA COUNTY – The board of supervisors deadline to pick a financial adviser for
The Oktibbeha County Reserve and Trust Fund passed three months ago. The extended search could be costing the county hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in interest.
On Wednesday, the board reopened bidding for a financial adviser for its $55 million trust containing proceeds from the sale of the former OCH Regional Medical Center after receiving no qualifying bids from its first round of bidding.
“I’m trying to maximize competition so we can get the best person that we can, in our best judgment to do this for us and the taxpayer,” County Administrator Wayne Carpenter said. “If it takes us a little bit longer to do that, then I think that’s the right thing to do.”
The board expects to have an adviser selected in January, six months after its July 1 deadline mandated by state legislation that created the trust.
The trust is currently in a low-risk “sweep account” earning 4.01% interest, Carpenter said. At that rate, between July 1 and Jan. 1 the fund could earn roughly $1.1 million in interest.
But Board Attorney Rob Roberson told The Dispatch he hopes a financial adviser managing the trust funds will bring the county annual returns between 8% and 15%.
At 8%, the fund could have generated close to $2.2 million interest over six months, double what the county is expecting from its current investment over that time frame. At 6%, which is about what the Lowndes County hospital trust fund earned in interest in Fiscal Year 2026, Oktibbeha County’s money could have grown by about $1.64 million by January – roughly $500,000 more than what the sweep account will generate.
Those numbers do not take into account fees the county would pay to a manager.
The legislature established Oktibbeha County’s trust fund in the 2026 session, setting July 1 as the deadline to invest the money and hire a manager.
Roberson, who on top of being the county board attorney represents District 43 in the state House of Representatives, sponsored the legislation and is listed as its author.
The county invested the money on time, but did not take its first swing at hiring a financial adviser until it issued a request for proposals July 15.
Six institutions submitted notices of interest – Regions, Trustmark, Renasant and Huntingdon banks, Edward Jones and Modern Woodmen – with none meeting the minimum standards the county set for awarding the contract.
Renasant is one of two managers for the Lowndes County trust fund.
Oktibbeha County issued a second RFP on Wednesday with revised standards financial institutions were more likely to meet – halving the errors and omissions insurance minimum and the bond coverage to $10 million, as well as changing the type of documents required for audits.
“We are trying to make certain that we’re doing the highest level of interest we can get with the lowest possible risk for the county,” Roberson said. “And in that lowest risk category, I guess we probably put in some requirements that were unattainable. … Of course part of that is inexperience on our part.”
Carpenter and Roberson drafted the original RFP off a collection of other trusts including neighboring counties, college endowments and anything Carpenter could get his hands on.
“I was just trying to educate myself on how all of this worked (and) what best practices are,” Carpenter said. “… I’ve never done it before; I mean this is certainly not my area of expertise.
“… We don’t have somebody in mind,” he added. “… I don’t want anybody to suspect that anything like that’s going on. We’re trying to maximize the number of institutions that can compete for this piece of business and still have sufficient resources and talent to do a good job.”
County Comptroller Deanna Collier, Carpenter and Roberson, who make up the evaluation committee, hope to select four finalists by Dec. 7, with a contract executed by Jan. 4.
But the board has technically been out of compliance with state law since it missed its deadline.
Roberson and Carpenter believe the deadline was too tight. Roberson said he wishes the bill had given the board a year.
“The attorneys in-house basically write the bill and I told them to write the bill like they typically write them,” Roberson said. “And once we got to looking at it later (after it passed), I went, ‘Oh crap. This is not very much time for us to get this done.’”
Roberson does not believe missing the deadline will present any issues for the board, but he will try to amend the legislation during the next session in January if necessary.