The law also allows the commissioners to request all of the Holly Springs Utility Department’s roughly 12,000 electric customers – both within and outside city limits – be placed under a court-ordered receivership, a move that would cost the city much of its annual revenue.
But in early Nov. 2024, months after the PSC’s investigation began, the three elected commissioners offered the city’s elected officials a lifeline: a hearing between the two parties in early January to figure out how to best collaborate on solutions.
Less than a week from that hearing, scheduled to take place in-person on Jan. 7, leaders of Holly Springs realized there was an issue. Their lead attorney, state Senator Bradford Blackmon, would be across the street at the Capitol building, preparing to gavel in the 2025 legislative session.
Because of that, the Hinds County Circuit Court ordered a temporary restraining order only hours before the scheduled hearing, delaying the meeting to a so far undetermined date.
Chris Brown, a former state legislator and commissioner of the northern district, in which Holly Springs is located, expressed his frustration at the delay.
“We had a series of meetings early on when we started this journey to try to understand what was going on in the Holly Springs Utility District. It was devastating,” said Brown, who recounted stories of residents losing power during winter ice storms, or running out of at-home oxygen supply during random blackouts.
“We asked early on for the city to cooperate with us to help resolve those issues, and we've still not heard anything other than silence. This show cause was to try to cooperate with the utility district and their employees to try to understand the improvements they've made, the headwinds that they have, so we can try to address this for our common constituents and our neighbors. But instead it's delay, 11th hour, 'we don't even want to cooperate'. It's shocking.”
He was joined by central district commissioner De’Keither Stamps, formerly a Hinds County Supervisor, in expressing palpable frustration with the leaders of Holly Springs.
But Stamps says the Public Service Commission is determined to continue their work in addressing seemingly-systemic issues in the city’s management of utilities.
“We're going to have meaningful conversations and make healthy decisions, but we have to do it in a room together and this is the only medium to do that. So, when a utility is trying to stop us from meeting, they're stopping us from helping. That's why I was against the filing of this TRO, and wish that we could just get past this and get everybody at the table to work together to solve these issues for the citizens of Holly Springs and in the Holly Springs service area.”
No officials from the city of Holly Springs were present at the hearing, and when reached later for comment, the Office of Mayor Sharon Gipson declined to comment for this story.
Holly Springs Ward 4 alderman Patricia Merriweather has not responded to multiple requests for comment, dating back to the onset of the Public Service Commission’s investigation in Aug. 2024.
