Mandeville Mayor Donaldย Villere's 2010 race against Trilby Lenfant, which he won by three votes, has been the subject of controversy ever since then. An administrative law panel will finally make a judgment on it soon. ย
After hearing nearly seven hours of testimony Thursday in an ethics case against Villere, theย three-member panel will render a decision in writing, Administrative Judge Charlie Perrault said at the conclusion of the hearing.
Villere is accused of making false statements in a flyer that hit Mandeville residents' mailboxes three days before the election to fill the remainder of Mayor Eddie Price's term after Price resigned in disgrace.
The campaign pamphlet raised questions about the ethics of Lenfant, then a Mandeville councilwoman, making more than a dozen claims that Lenfant said were either false or misleading.
Among other things, it accused her of getting breaks on property taxes and directing city insurance business to the company for which her husband works.
Larry Centola, who is Villere's nephew as well as his lawyer, said in his closing argument Thursday that the case boils down to hurt feelings over a political race. He said Lenfant now works for a political opponent of Villere.
Lenfant works for Parish President Pat Brister, and Villere ran a phone poll in the spring that offered a number of names as potential candidates to run against Brister, including his own.
Centola asked the panel to halt a "baseless witch hunt for political purposes," saying that Mandeville voters spoke long ago and have since returned Villere to office two more times.
But lawyers for the state Board of Ethics, who prosecuted the case, said that Villere had shown reckless disregard for the truth in statements he included in the flyer and a subsequent email, which said his accusations were based on thorough research and public records.
The email ended with the words "Sincerely, Donald Villere," which lawyer Tracy Barker called possibly the biggest lie in the message.
Political speech is protected, Barker told the panel, but that doesn't mean it can be unfettered. In Villere's case, she said, he had information in his possession that proved statements in his flyer were not true.
Ethics board attorneys hammered on minutes from City Council meetings that showed Lenfant had not voted to give insurance business to Traveler's, the insurance company for which her husband worked. Villere testified that he was provided information on her votes by then-Councilman Jerry Coogan. Coogan in turn testified that he got his information from then-Finance Director Milton Stiebing.
The most heated comments of the day came from Lenfant's husband, Jay Lenfant, who took the stand to refute the claims that Trilby Lenfant had voted to direct city insurance contracts to his company and that the couple had benefited from favorable property tax assessments, among other accusations.
Jay Lenfant recited a litany of Mandeville scandals that preceded the 2010 election, including Coogan taking a police car to Florida after Hurricane Katrina to check on family members and former Mayor Price's crash through a toll gate on the Causeway and later revelations that he took golf trips from contractors.
Price was ultimately convicted on corruption charges.
During earlier testimony, Coogan said that he, Price and political consultant Debbie Smith had met to craft the anti-Lenfant flyer and that Coogan had done the research for it.
Jay Lenfant called the piece a "political assassination" of his wife.
During cross-examination, Centola asked Jay Lenfant if his wife had been an ally of Price and was simply trying to distance herself from him once he ran into political trouble. Lenfant retorted that his wife was close to Price before she knew about the bad things he did. "She was trying to fix Mandeville," he said.
Her efforts, which included reforms to use of city credit cards and other measures, earned her the hatred of Price and Coogan, Jay Lenfant said.
Trilby Lenfant, who was the first witness, described Villere as a man who was desperate for a job and trailing in the polls. She testified that her polls showed her with 60 percent of the vote before the attack piece appeared. He couldn't win on his merits, she said, "so he resorted to lying to the very people he was asking to trust him."
She said the statements hurt and embarrassed her and her family, but worst of all they deprived Mandeville voters of a fair and honest election, "and for that Donald Villere should be ashamed."
The administrative panel denied a request by Villere's attorney for a directed verdict of acquittal after the Ethics Board called its last witness, which meant that the defense had to put on its case.
But Centola called only one witness, Villere, who also had been called by the Board of Ethics.
Centola asked Villere if he believed the statements in the flyer were truthful at the time and if he still believed them to be truthful. Villere said yes to both questions.
A state ethics panel formally dismissed charges against Mandeville Mayor Donald Villere this…
"What we learned today is that this libelous flyer was a work product of a disgraced mayor, a desperate wannabe mayor and a man who would have run for mayor had he not had his own ethical transgressions โ Price, Villere and Coogan," Trilby Lenfant said following the trial.
Villere declined comment. But his attorney called the case a waste of tax dollars. "It's been seven years and who knows how many dollars have been wasted. She lost an election and got hurt feelings, and the taxpayers have to suffer," Centola said.
Lenfant filed her complaint after the 2010 election, and the Ethics Board investigated the allegations for almost a year before bringing charges.
The case almost died in September 2015 when the Ethics Adjudicatory Board โ which acts as the jury over ethics complaints โ ruled that the Ethics Board had not met the standard to file charges and could not use evidence collected after the original charges had been filed.
But the Ethics Board, which acts as the prosecutor in such cases, appealed that decision, and late last year, a state appeals court agreed, setting the stage for Thursday's hearing.
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeal ruled in December that the Ethics Board had met the standard to bring a case and that it should have been allowed to conduct normal trial discovery.
A state appeals court has overturned an ethics panel's ruling that effectively tossed out an…