London Mayor Weddle resigns after appeals court reinstates his ouster
London Mayor Randall Weddle said Friday he will resign from office following an appeals court decision that would have reinstated his September removal by the city council.
Weddle’s resignation will take effect on Sunday, he said. He respects “the rule of law, the judge, and the decision of the court,” he said in a brief resignation letter to the council Friday and vowed that his commitment to the city and its people “never will” end.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion Friday reversing a lower court decision that reinstated Weddle just two weeks after he was removed from office by the London City Council for misconduct in September.
In the stunning reversal, the three-judge panel found Weddle had improperly taken out a $5 million mortgage on behalf of the city’s tourism commission without the council’s express consent, as required by law. Kentucky law doesn’t explicitly state that incurring municipal debt is a legislative function, but mayors are barred from executing contracts without council approval and necessary appropriations, the decision states.
The city council has not yet made plans to replace Weddle, an adviser told the Herald-Leader. His resignation letter was sent just hours before the council was expected to vote on a measure seeking his removal by the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office after a circuit court determined he lacked the qualifications to run for a second term.
A majority of council members signed a notice canceling Friday’s meeting following Weddle’s announcement.
The council, long at odds with the embattled mayor, voted unanimously against Weddle on five of 11 charges and that three of them warranted removal from office, but the appeals court Friday said the mortgage itself was sufficient grounds.
“Weddle’s execution of the mortgage, assignment, and loan document without obtaining prior city council approval was, by itself, sufficient grounds for removal for misconduct and/or willful neglect,” the court said. “Thus, we decline to discuss or opine upon the other bases for removal found by the city council.”
In addition to the unapproved mortgage, the council determined Weddle had misused the city police department and its funds for personal protection, intimidated others with that protection detail and willfully left an ethics commission seat vacant. The mayor also failed to host required meetings and publish enacted ordinances online, the council decided.
Friday’s decision and the mayor’s resignation comes as banks and a luxury auto lender have sought to recoup credit and loans after state prosecutors charged him for allegedly funneling money to prominent Democrats in 2022 on behalf of his family members and business associates to flout individual campaign donor limits.
Weddle and his attorneys have maintained his innocence and insisted that the legal bombardment boils down to political strife. First elected in 2022, Weddle vowed to “clean up” the small Southeastern Kentucky city hall and almost immediately made enemies with members of the council who accused the former businessman of bully politics.
The controversial mayor with deep ties to the city police force, quickly faced criticism for his handling of the 2024 police shooting of a rural Laurel County man during a botched raid for stolen lawn equipment. The man, 63-year-old Douglas “Doug” Harless, was pronounced dead at the scene, yet Weddle and the officers refused to admit that the London Police Department was at the wrong address until after a grand jury declined to indict any of the officers involved and state police released the contents of their investigation.
Weddle was quick to chalk up his legal entanglements to political opponents. He was named in a defamation lawsuit early last year for unsubstantiated claims he made about several London residents during the taping of a true-crime YouTube podcast. The mayor promptly retaliated by calling a press conference with his private-sector attorney and blaming his legal trouble on a “pedo clan” he claimed — without evidence — was embedded in and around the bureaucracy at city hall.
Meanwhile, Weddle’s administration has reportedly come under criminal investigation by the FBI for misuse of federal criminal background checks after it was alleged he instructed officers to dig up dirt on political opponents.
Unapproved mortgage upends Weddle’s political aspirations
Last year, the executive director of the city’s Tourism and Convention Commission gave a presentation to the city council about the agency’s effort to rebuild the county fairground after a devastating tornado ripped through the region a few months earlier.
The next day, Weddle signed documents to mortgage city property, including a city-maintained wilderness road park, to secure the $5 million loan “without any motion being made or vote taken by the city council,” the appeals court said.
When the council began proceedings to remove Weddle the next month, the unapproved loan topped their list of misconduct. He was removed from office but appealed the decision. A Laurel County Circuit Court judge reversed the council’s vote for lack of sufficient grounds.
But the council, its recently instated acting mayor, several individual members of the council and the city itself appealed that reversal to the court of appeals. Weddle and his attorneys have insisted that the mortgage didn’t require the city council’s authorization and that, as an independent, city-county agency, the tourism commission’s commitment to rebuild the fairgrounds was enough for the mayor to execute the loan.
But the appeals court said the details of the agreement Weddle signed directly implicated city resources, forcing the city council’s involvement.
For months now, that appeal has been sitting silently in the background, awaiting a ruling, while Weddle was indicted by a special-called grand jury, targeted in a slew of city council-led investigations, and named in multiple new state and federal civil complaints.
On Friday, Weddle said he was proud of his accomplishments as mayor, including infrastructure investments, public safety and city services improvements and expanded economic opportunities.
“Those accomplishments were never the work of one person,” he wrote in his resignation letter. “They belong to our city employees, our council, our community partners, and the citizens who believed in what we could achieve together.”
And through it all, Weddle preserved a sizable group of supporters who remained dedicated to his mission of uprooting the political status quo. In May, Weddle led the pack in a tight primary to narrow down the mayoral race to two.
Local business owner Matt Orr’s name will be alone on the ballot in November after a circuit court judge ruled last month that Weddle was disqualified from running for reelection because he wasn’t living at the London address he listed in his paperwork to run.
“I will always be humbled that the people of London again placed their confidence in me during this year’s primary election,” Weddle wrote. “That expression of trust is one of the greatest honors of my life, and I remain profoundly thankful to everyone who believed in our shared vision for this city.”
This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 11:47 AM.
