The city of Orange Beach is refusing to release portions of police department employee surveys that could show when a key city official first learned of the Labor Day 2024 incident in which officers found Mayor Tony Kennon inside the city’s Coastal Resources Building during a domestic violence call.
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The surveys matter to the city’s biggest ongoing controversy because of a single timeline question: when did city leaders find out? The ethics complaint filed against Kennon by three council members claims City Attorney Jamie Parris Logan said she did not become aware of the incident until approximately April or May of 2025 — when she was reviewing employee surveys within the police department related to the performance of the then-police chief. The complaint also states that City Administrator Ford Handley and City Clerk Renee Eberly knew of the incident within a day or so of it occurring.
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What the city released — and what it held back
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In answers to a public records request, the city granted access to \”AI response summaries and charts\” of the surveys but declined to release narrative responses from individual employees. Logan cited two Alabama Supreme Court decisions — Stone v. Consolidated Publishing Company and Birmingham News Co. v. Muse — and said in a written statement that narrative responses \”are not subject to public release as they contain sensitive and private personnel information and were submitted by employees pursuant to an expectation of privacy.\”
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She also said the city does not have the original survey responses as submitted. \”The survey was an online submission so as I understand, the individual submissions are not in any way separated or provided back to us,\” Logan wrote in an Aug. 3 email. \”As existing public records or documents, the documents provided are the only thing we have.\”
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Open records attorney Evans Bailey said the two cited cases leave the outcome uncertain. One protects information given in confidence; the other effectively leaves the decision on a records request to a judge. \”It may also depend on if they were expressly given a guarantee that these things will be kept anonymous, and there may be. It will depend on what the narrative says. You really have to take this stuff on a case-by-case basis,\” Bailey said. In Stone, the Alabama Supreme Court left the question of whether a public record will be released to a judge’s discretion, balancing \”the interest of the citizens in knowing what their public officers are doing\” against the interest of government running efficiently.
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The denial also initially cited two Alabama Attorney General’s opinions that appear unrelated to open records — one concerning property tax exemptions, another concerning Lawrence County fire protection fees — before Logan clarified the response with different 1996 and 2017 opinions, one on school board documents and one on draft administrative rules at the Department of Revenue.
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What the summaries do show
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The summaries the city did release, covering surveys from 2024 and 2025, paint a troubled picture of the department under then-Chief Steve Brown, who did not respond to a request for comment. Respondents were most concerned with compensation, office communication, accountability and advancement. \”A recurring theme is the perceived lack of consistent leadership and accountability, with many noting that policies are not applied equally across all ranks, shifts, or divisions,\” the summary reads. \”Concerns include instances of favoritism, biased promotion processes, and a general lack of transparency from command staff, which has negatively impacted organizational trust.\”
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\”Many respondents report a lack of uniform disciplinary standards, noting that certain individuals appear immune to consequences for performance issues, misconduct, or policy violations,\” the summary continues. Among respondents, roughly 19 percent named accountability a top-three issue and 20 percent said the same of morale.
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The summaries themselves raise questions: some charts lack attribution, omit question text or present unexplained groupings. Logan later completed an internal investigation of the police response to the Labor Day 2024 incident, finding deficiencies were attributable to broader training issues, according to the ethics complaint. Kennon has repeatedly denied wrongdoing but has admitted he was in the Coastal Resources Building when officers responded to the 911 call, and his handling of the body camera footage is the subject of an October ethics commission hearing.
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What the surveys said about that night, and when city officials actually read it, may now rest with a court — unless the city reconsiders.
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The officials named in the complaint have stayed quiet
City Administrator Ford Handley and City Clerk Renee Eberly — the two officials the complaint says knew of the incident within a day — have each declined to discuss the complaint’s findings. Handley said his understanding was that those involved are encouraged not to comment publicly while the review is ongoing, but emphasized that he takes his role seriously, including ensuring Orange Beach operates responsibly and transparently, and said he would cooperate fully so the matter could be resolved. Eberly likewise declined to say when she first learned of the 911 call, citing the executive session process, and noted that as city clerk she does not have access to police databases — records requests go to the police department, which returns only what has been cleared for release.
The security footage that was never pulled
The complaint also alleges that no one ever asked for the building’s own security footage. According to the filing, a senior Coastal Resources employee said neither the police, the city administrator nor the city attorney requested video from the Coastal Resources Building from the night of the alleged incident. The building had a camera system installed when it was built, and reporters were later able to view body camera footage of officers finding Kennon inside the building after the call — but Eberly told a reporter in July 2025 that no recordings from the building system of that night existed.
How the call came in
The brief police investigation that night was spurred by a waitress at a nearby restaurant, who told a 911 dispatcher she saw a naked man on a balcony of the Coastal Resources Building hitting a woman three times and dragging her into an office while yelling that she should never walk out on him. The call came in after midnight. Kennon has repeatedly denied hitting his wife that night but has admitted he was in the building; his wife, Paula, was with him and could have spoken to officers, but she never was officially interviewed, according to the footage and complaint. The complaint also alleges Kennon threatened councilors with lawsuits and political persecution if they released his body camera footage, hoping to settle a federal lawsuit filed by attorney C.C. Dixon Moreno. Interim Police Chief Trent Johnson has deferred questions to Handley, and City Attorney Jamie Logan — who the complaint says did not learn of the incident until summer 2025 — also declined comment.