‘You deserve to know the truth.’ Supervisors pick sides, spar again over Coast tourism drama.

Despite letters from the Gulf Coast Business Council and local casino operators urging her reappointment, Brooke Shoultz is not back on the Coastal Mississippi tourism board after another battle erupted at Tuesday’s Harrison County Supervisors meeting.

Supervisor Connie Rockco defended her actions at the June 13 meeting when she nominated Thomas Sherman to replace Shoultz on the board. He was appointed by a 3-2 vote.

“Ms. Brooke Shoultz was not ousted. Her term was up July 1,” Rockco said, referring to an article in the Sun Herald about the 15 minute argument between her and Supervisor Rebecca Powers.

Tuesday’s meeting became a two-against-two battle, with Powers and Supervisor Marlin Ladner standing behind Shoultz while Rockco and Supervisor Beverly Martin were opposed to putting her back on the tourism commission. Kent Jones, president of the supervisors, at times played referee.

Powers made a motion to rescind Sherman’s nomination and reinstate Shoultz to the board.

Rockco said that the motion was an insult to Sherman, who has decades of experience in the tourism business.

Powers said she knows Sherman is a wine distributor and she looked at Kim Fritz, who serves on the tourism board, and said she knows Sherman is the best friend of Fritz’s husband.

With a murmur from the audience, Powers said, “You deserve to know the truth.”

Powers’ motion was never voted on because Martin pointed to the legislation approved during the creating of Coastal Mississippi to promote the three counties of South Mississippi.

Tim Holleman, attorney for the supervisors, says there is one stand-along sentence that is a problem.

Each Harrison County Supervisor is given one appointment to the tourism board, and there are four at-large board members any of the supervisors can appoint.

The sentence makes it unclear if at-large appointments can only be made if the nominee lives in that supervisor’s district, Holleman said. His opinion is any supervisor can nominate a person from anywhere in the county, he said, but the sentence doesn’t say that.

Shoultz lives in Rockco’s district, and Rockco has made it clear she doesn’t want her reappointed to the board.

It was Martin rather than Rockco who originally nominated Shoultz to serve on the tourism commission, although she didn’t live in Martin’s district.

“I didn’t know about it before. Now I do,” Martin said of the sentence in the legislation.

The supervisors unanimously voted to ask for an attorney general opinion and Holleman said he will ask for a determination before the next meeting in two weeks.

In another shakeup during the meeting, Supervisor Rebecca Powers asked to remove her appointment, Ann Stewart, from the board and nominated Louis Skrmetta to serve the remainder of the term. Stewart said she initially didn’t want to be on the commission but now would like to serve out her term.

Ashley Edwards, president of the Gulf Coast Business Council, issued a letter to the supervisors on July 4 and was at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I think it’s understandable that the board wanted to get clarification on the law,” he said after the meeting. “We certainly have no problems with them going through the procedure so that they’re comfortable with the decisions they’re making,”

The priority of the GCBC is to make sure the voices of Hancock and Jackson counties are also heard on the Coastal Mississippi board.

Several staff members have left recently and Shoultz, as president of the tourism commission, has made good-faith efforts to work with the business community to identify problems on the tourism commission that may have led to problems and implement reforms, he said.