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Mandeville Mayor Donald Villere has been cleared on two counts of ethics violations stemming from his 2010 campaign for mayor, when he defeated Trilby Lenfant by three votes in a race to fill the rest of Eddie Price's unexpired term.

The state Ethics Board charged Villere in 2011 with twice violating a state law that makes it illegal for a candidate for office to knowingly make false statements: once in a campaign piece mailed to Mandeville voters three days before the March 27 election and again in an email sent to voters the day before the election.

The Ethics Adjudicatory Board, which heard the case in September 2017, ruled Tuesday that the state Board of Ethics had failed to prove that Villere knowingly made false statements.

The board, which conducted a seven-hour hearing at which Lenfant and Villere both testified, concluded that some of the statements in the campaign material were false and misleading. But the panel said the Ethics Board failed to show that Villere knew the statements were false, a necessary element under the law.

"Finally, after eight years, the (adjudicatory board) has dismissed all charges against me," Villere said in a statement Thursday. "My response has always been that I have never stated anything that I knew was a false statement regarding my opponent."

Villere pointed to the complex history of the case, saying it had been dismissed by the adjudicatory board before, but the Ethics Board appealed the decision, and the state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal remanded it back for a further hearing.

"It has taken eight years with considerable legal expense to navigate through the legal system to only provide a case study for the board to follow for the future," Villere said. "This case should not have been accepted in the beginning. The system failed the taxpayers of ¶¶Òõh."

The campaign material at issue sought to shred Lenfant's image as a reform candidate, accusing her of conflicts of interest as a City Council member and voting on measures to profit herself. The mailer claimed, for example, that she voted three times to give the city's insurance contract to her husband's company; the board concluded that claim was both false and misleading.

Villere was accused of making 13 statements that were false, misleading or both in the mailer and one in the email. The adjudicatory board agreed that three statements in the mailer were false and that the email statement was false. It found some other statements to be misleading and some it called opinion.

But overall, the ruling said the evidence that was presented about Villere's intent was not sufficient to demonstrate that he actually knew the statements were false, "because there was always someone between (him) and the false statements."

For example, the ruling said, the email that Villere sent out claimed that every statement he had made in a campaign mailer "is public record and true." The board said that there were three false statements in the mailer, but they were all provided to Villere by Jerry Coogan.

"Mr. Coogan was on the City Council with Ms. Lenfant. He would therefore seem to be a reliable source of information about Ms. Lenfant's votes on the council," the ruling said. 

Coogan obtained false information about Lenfant's voting record on city insurance contracts from Milton Stieving, who was then the city's finance director, the ruling said. But it said the record doesn't provide clear and convincing evidence that Villere knew neither man had checked public records, such as council minutes, to verify her votes.

Lenfant said she is pleased that the board clearly noted that Villere's campaign literature was both false and misleading.

"Unfortunately, it also gives future candidates an out, which is unfair to both the electorate and candidates who play by the rules. It is also contradictory to ... (the) pursuit of fair and truthful electioneering," she said. "Our state's image will continue to be tarnished if we let candidates promote themselves by using deceptive political maneuvers."

Lenfant, who served two terms on the Mandeville City Council, now works in Parish President Pat Brister's administration.

Villere, who is term-limited as mayor, has acknowledged that he is considering a run for parish president. But he is now seeking a change to Mandeville's home rule charter that would allow him to run for one more term as mayor.