Governor Bobby Jindal calls the charges against Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price in a state legislative audit extremely serious.

Jindal said he has been watching the developments in Mandeville very closely, calling the findings of the audit very serious.

WWL-TV

Gov. Jindal comments on Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price.

“These are very serious allegations,” Gov. Jindal said.  “I hope the council takes them seriously.  These aren’t minor infractions, and there is an accumulation of several infractions here,” adding he wants to let the federal investigation play itself out, as the story grows.

And Legislative Auditor Dan Daigle says the level of confrontation between the Auditor's Office and the City of Mandeville has also been unusually high.

In his only official statement about the audit, Mayor Eddie Price said, “We have made a request to the Legislative Auditor's Office to return the documents that were taken from city hall, but they have refused to do so.”

Daigle says that’s not true. Originals couldn't be returned because the feds subpoenaed those. But he says they sent the city copies of everything more than three weeks ago.

“We have, we provided the city with their records,” he said.

"This is, again, the mayor, his attorneys, excuses and trying to divert blame away from where it truly belongs, firmly in the court of the mayor,” said Raphael Goyeneche, head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

Goyeneche and the Metropolitan Crime Commission have called for Eddie Price to resign.

The Secretary of State's Office said they have received inquiries about recalling the Mandeville mayor, but nothing has been officially filed.

"I don't have any reason to believe the Legislative Auditor’s Office is operating in bad faith. It is unfortunate that the city has developed an adversarial relationship with legislative auditor, and, perhaps, it would be safe to say that both have played hard ball with the other,” said Gray Sexton, the outside attorney hired by the City of Mandeville to represent them in this audit process.

He spent 40 years serving on the ethics board.

In the report, auditors say, Eddie Price claims a trip to Pebble Beach, Calif., was an appropriate city expense because he looked at architecture there and brought the ideas back home.

Sexton says he knows that will draw severe criticism. “That is certainly a reasonable first impression.  You know the old bromide about the devil being in the details? That is certainly true. And until the city gets a better understanding of what the purpose of that trip was and whether or not the interests of the city may have been advanced, again, it’s premature for the city to draw any conclusions, in my opinion, about the propriety of the expenditure.”

“I'm sure that if he (Sexton) had a choice between defending these actions and prosecuting these actions, which was the role that he filled for over 30 years with state’s Ethics Commission, I bet you if he was truthful and you hooked him up to polygraph, he would rather prosecute something like this because this is indefensible,” said Goyeneche.

Sexton will meet Friday with Auditor Dan Daigle. They both hope to get answers and get further along in this process.  Mandeville Councilwoman Trilby Lenfant will also meet on Friday with Daigle.