FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Open Meetings Act Complaint Filed Over Ocean Springs Parking Garage Records
OCEAN SPRINGS, MS. — GC Wire publisher E. Brian Rose has filed a formal Open Meetings Act Complaint with the Mississippi Ethics Commission following nearly a year of journalistic investigation into records surrounding the City of Ocean Springs’ controversial $8 million downtown parking garage project.
The complaint centers on a question now directly tied to ongoing 2026 disputes involving the publicly funded garage, recent Board actions, and the City’s continued reliance on historical grant records tied to the project:
“Which grant agreements were actually approved by the Ocean Springs Board of Aldermen at their May 17, 2022 Recess Meeting?”
According to the complaint, the official minutes once properly attached the Mississippi Development Authority Gulf Coast Restoration Fund grant agreements approved by the Board in May 2022. However, later public records responses produced official minutes records containing different agreements drafted over a year later in July 2023 that were never approved by the Board in open session.
The complaint alleges the discrepancies became material during recent public controversy surrounding the City’s proposed garage lease arrangement, ownership obligations tied to the project, and multiple 2026 Board actions involving the garage.
The filing alleges the official records associated with the May 17, 2022 meeting no longer satisfy the Open Meetings Act requirement for “an accurate recording of any final actions taken” during public meetings.
According to the complaint, the discrepancies were publicly presented to the Ocean Springs Board of Aldermen during a May 5, 2026 meeting, where Alderman Karen Stennis introduced evidence showing differences between the agreements approved in 2022 and agreements later attached to the official meeting records.
A motion to correct the official records failed.
The complaint also references subsequent public comments made by Alderman Steve Tillis, who stated he had voted no over concerns that changing prior Board records or minutes could trigger a “full investigation,” outside counsel involvement, and taxpayer expense. In separate comments, Tillis acknowledged that “there has been much misappropriated documents” related to the issue.
The complaint includes exhibits consisting of:
- executed August 2022 grant agreements previously identified by the City as the approved agreements,
- official minutes records later containing different agreements,
- comparative exhibits showing discrepancies between the documents,
- and public statements from Board members discussing the records issue.
The complaint further alleges that at least one agreement attached to the official minutes packet is internally inconsistent on its face, combining a 2022 “Grant Agreement” cover page with substantive pages originating from a later 2023 “Amended and Restated Grant Agreement.”
The complaint was submitted to the Mississippi Ethics Commission on May 22, 2026.
Attached Documents:
🤜🤛 👏👏👏 Well Done! Thank you for your continued Due Diligence that appears lacking by certain elected officials.
Good story and an important complaint filing. I have one observation after reading the stories, minutes, reviewing the documents and watching the recordings of the meetings. It is a subtle difference but an important one: Alderman Stennis was introducing a motion to correct the minutes of the 2022 meeting. This implies there was something wrong with the minutes. That’s not the case. The minutes were correct originally, they were altered after the fact by parties unknown. The Clerk is the official custodian of records and has that responsibility by law. If the Clerk discovered the records were altered then they have the responsibility to report it and take corrective action. That is not what took place. The Clerk, City Attirney and other members of city government stated that the documents that were switched out were the correct ones. That is obviously and factually false since they were created a year after the fact.
What Alderman Stennis was doing was trying to RESTORE the mi utes of the 2922 meeting and the originally attached documents to what was reflected Ted before the sep took place.
The observation that the swapped out documents also appear to clearly reflect that they too were altered by swapping out pages, just adds credence to the allegations that this was all done to foster a possibly more sinister purpose such as defrauding the public.
All of this clearly begs for an investigation by outside parties or agencies since it is clear that the majority of the administration is either involved or acquiescing to the fraud.
It will probably take either a civil lawsuit or criminal charges to get to the bottom of who, what and why.