Last year Larry Buffington admitted he arranged a meeting between Covington County Supervisors, members of the hospital board, and a friend of his that resulted in his friend getting the contract to run the hospital. Now his wife works there. Sounds fishy.
These are his words on the hospital contract (audio clip):
"I asked Joey McNulty to be here because I do want to say another thing since I'm 'so anti-Simpson County.' Joey McNulty got the contract on my local hospital in Covington County. I would dare to say that he would tell you, if hadn't been for me he wouldn't have gotten that contract, because I asked him to come down. We were having trouble with our local hospital, like a lot of them do, and I asked him to come down, and I arranged for a meeting with a couple of members of the Board of Supervisors and couple of members of the Board of the Hospital to discuss it, before they were fixin to sale the hospital, to give the con-the hospital to somebody else. He was a friend and I knew he was competent and I knew he could do the job. So I went to bat for him, and I don't know exactly what he made off of it, but I know what his contract was for, and I know how much we billed last year. And it generated probably about a little over a million dollars for this community, because what did he do with that million dollars? He hired twenty to twenty-five more people. Local people. People that reside in-in Simpson County. May have hired three or four from Covington County, but most didn't want to drive up there. So I asked him to come today because I was going to use him to show, because I first of all, I care about all my counties."A judge arranges for his friend to get a hospital contract who then employs his wife. Is that what judges do in Mississippi?
