Judge: City has ‘no obligation’ to produce reports with unaudited fund balances
COVINGTON — A suit filed by candidate for mayor Jeff Lyons and social media ally Andrew Ellender was dismissed “with prejudice” today (March 19th) by Division I Judge Reginald T. Badeaux III, meaning it cannot be brought back before the court.
In his ruling, the judge found that the City had complied with Lyons and Ellender’s public records requests, also admonishing them for misquoting the City’s Home Rule Charter in their original complaint.
“I do appreciate your dedication as a ‘watchdog’ on behalf of your community … but your adding on language to the charter such as the phrase ‘including fund balances’ could be construed by some other judge as an attempt to mislead the court,” the judge said.
“I think the City has a better argument standing on the language of the charter itself. … In a nutshell, the City has no obligation to generate monthly or year-end reports that contain unaudited fund balances. Therefore, I’m going to … dismiss the mandamus proceeding at plaintiffs’ cost,” Badeaux continued.
Ellender, known mostly for his pro-Sucette Harbor social media posts, and Lyons filed for a writ of mandamus in 22nd Judicial District Court on February 27th in an attempt to force the City of Mandeville to provide certain end-of-year financial data, alleging the City had not complied with public records requests nor Section 3-05, Subsection 6 of the City’s Home Rule Charter.
Today’s judgment reads:
“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that Defendants timely responded to the Complainants’ public records request, explaining that Defendants had no responsive record to produce, which precludes any cause of action for mandamus under the Public Records Law; and
“IT IS HEREBY FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that Defendants’ Exceptions of No Cause of Action and No Right of Action are hereby granted, dismissing the above-captioned matter with prejudice.”
-30-
Mandeville Daily 
That’s very good news! Thanks for reporting this. ________________________________
LikeLike
William, Excellent! Please post this on Nextdoor. Thanks, John ________________________________
LikeLike
William, Please post this on Next Door. ________________________________
LikeLike
Wow! Funny you should ask. What a coincidence. As a matter of fact, I did just that. A little background, I quit posting on Nextdoor about six months ago and pretty much purged all my posts.
I found that the number of click-throughs I was receiving from Nextdoor paled in comparison to my straight-up hits or my Facebook click-throughs. At that time, about half my daily hits were from straight-up followers who have bookmarked my http://www.mandeville.news website or typed it in. About 30 percent were from Facebook click-throughs. And only about two percent were from Nextdoor (on a good day) and the rest were search engine results.
But the headache from the handful of 5-10 people complaining and disputing or resorting to using ad hominem, false personal attacks was not worth it. You know the types… today it would be Andrew Ellender, Jeffrey Lyons Jr. and Sr., Michael Blaché and company who are desperately trying to get Jeff Lyons elected. That’s fine. It’s a free country. Good luck.
However, I don’t owe it to these people to give them a platform. I earned my platform by reporting the truth and providing salient commentary. When I started, there was no one doing this reporting, period. We are in a “news desert.”
But now back to my point. Yesterday, I cranked out this Lyons-Ellender story and someone suggested that I share just the link on Nextdoor. Keep in mind, the story in question was straight news reporting of a public court hearing. Journalism 101 stuff. There is no fluff, no opinions, no frills.
Yet for some reason, within an hour of it being posted, my Nextdoor account was completely locked out and suspended. This was about 3 p.m. or so. I contacted their customer service and asked why. I finally got a response about midnight saying they had warned me to take down the link in question and I didn’t so they suspended my account until — guess when — the day after the upcoming election. What a coincidence! I never received a warning or notice. My account was suspended almost as soon as I posted the story. Crazy weird, right? When I go to log in even now, I get nothing but a completely blank screen, with no messages and no explanation. I had to Google to get the customer support link, which was completely inaccessible while I was still logged in.
I was suspended without warning — almost instantly — for posting a link to a straight news story under the guise it was “shaming” and violated community guidelines. “Shaming?” Meanwhile, if you go on Nextdoor right now, you can find tons of posts from these same people, attacking folks like Jason Zuckerman, Clay Madden, Kevin Vogeltanz and others with reckless abandon and in very vicious and personal ways.
What’s more, Today, the day after my story was posted, Bob Warren of the Times Picayune (Nola.com) posted an almost blow-by-blow identical story to mine. Nothing wrong with that, because as I stated earlier, this one was easy, plus Bob is great writer and does top-notch work. But I wonder if I would have been suspended if I had posted a link to HIS story instead of mine. Hmmmm. The world may never know.
I don’t need Nextdoor. I get thousands of readers and views without it. The only people who seem to engage are the same handful of people who created their little echo chamber of shame. Good luck with that. There just aren’t that many hits from Nextdoor to put up with the foolishness.
LikeLike