New mayor of London named after Randall Weddle officially resigns

In a lengthy special meeting Monday afternoon, marked by a series of votes reasserting legislative control of city resources and personnel, the London City Council brought an early end to former Mayor Randall Weddle’s tenure at city hall and named his successor.

The council accepted Weddle’s resignation and appointed Tracie Handley to serve out the remainder of Weddle’s six-month term. The embattled former businessman formally resigned under pressure from a Kentucky appeals court ruling that would have reinstated his ouster by the council last year.

He submitted his resignation to the council on Friday, effective Sunday.

It’s the second time Handley, a retired trial consultant, has replaced Weddle as mayor of London. She briefly filled the vacancy for two weeks last year after the city council voted to remove Weddle, and before he was reinstated by a Laurel Circuit Court judge. She was approved as mayor by a 4-0 vote. Council members Jim Baker and John Bruner abstained.

Handley, who didn’t immediately respond to a Herald-Leader request for comment Monday, finished last in a three-person primary election for mayor in May. Weddle and local businessman Matt Orr advanced to the November general election, but Weddle was later removed from the ballot after a circuit judge ruled that he didn’t meet city residency requirements, leaving Orr’s name the only one listed.

Monday’s nearly two-hour meeting lacked the fanfare and heated debates that had become commonplace under Weddle’s turbulent three-and-a-half year term, but it cleared the way for the council to undo much of the former mayor’s agenda.

The council heard a first reading of a proposal to unanimously amend its controversial budget by transferring control of emergency medical response and ambulance services to the city fire department this summer. Members also heard a proposal to ease up on measures meant to prevent the mayor’s office from exercising too much control over small contracts and expenditures.

It was ultimately a $5 million unauthorized mortgage Weddle took out on behalf of the city tourism commission last year that led the Kentucky Court of Appeals to rule last week that the council had acted within its right when it dismissed the mayor before his four-year term was complete.

The amended budget also prohibits the mayor’s office from using city police as a personal protective detail, as Weddle was accused of doing, and formally limits the police’s operating area as strictly within city limits.

Weddle faced sharp 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 would not 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.

The council also heard first reading on an ordinance that would give it responsibility for confirming appointments to the city ethics board. Weddle and members of the council repeatedly clashed over who would fill vacancies on the panel responsible for ensuring ethical conduct by city officers and employees.

Weddle and the council disagreed over how to count a 60-day deadline by which vacancies were supposed by be filled by the mayor alone and by which the city council could instead fill. Weddle refused to recognize appointments the council made during his term, and the dispute over the ethics code board rendered its work effectively null for months.

Under the newly proposed ordinance, appointments to the ethics commission would be made by the mayor and confirmed by the council, and terms would be staggered to prevent too many vacancies at one time. It also allows both the mayor and any one member of the council to advance complaints to the commission and protects individuals who make complaints in good faith.

Although he is officially no longer mayor of London, Weddle still faces nearly a dozen state and federal lawsuits over his conduct in office and a special, state-led felony prosecution for allegedly skirting individual campaign donor limits by giving more than $93,000 to prominent Democrats on behalf of his family members and business associates.

Weddle has denied any wrongdoing. He and his lawyers have accused the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office of advancing a politically motivated criminal case.