Thursday, October 1, 2026
John Mannone, a longtime Oceanside resident and local attorney, is running for commissioner of Oceanside Sanitation District 7.
He said he wants to clean up the district by bringing the board more in compliance with the state comptrollers audit, which found numerous points where the district worked outside of the law, and he wants to claw back monies that were not supposed to be paid to former employees. He is looking reshape the organization’s structure, and to bring more transparency, by publishing more consistently, posting minutes and resolutions, plus the votes of the commissioners, and the comments of the public. He would also agree to have the meetings live on line. He said the public needs an easily accessible record, so the public can react in a timely matter. He wants more ethical and conflicts of interest disclosures to be a requirement. The biggest thing he wants to change is to stop the practice of having a consultant running the commission.
Of note, Mannone was Tom Lanning’s attorney during the last election, when the vote count took months to resolve.
Mannone has been associated with real estate deals in Florida and New Orleans. He says it was his association with developers Michael Samuel and Adam Swickle and not anything he did that lead to problems with those properties. Mannone was involved with Samuel in a Miami condominium project called South of Fifth that foreclosed on an $80 million dollar mortgage. Mannone managed the investments for Samuel in that project.
Later he was brought in for Samuel to sell equity in the Market Street Power Plant project in New Orleans. Mannone, as general legal counsel, formed Matrix Capital LLC to administer transactions for that project from 2009 to 2015. Even with an investment in the project by another developer, and monies from Mannone and Swickle, the project defaulted on a $4.8 million dollar loan and a $6.5 million dollar mortgage. Mannone still holds a fiduciary position on the board of Matrix.
Over the course of the project Mannone and his team uncovered an email showing New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin would get a “piece of the deal” selling the power plant, which led to the Mayor’s downfall. Mannone ultimately had the investors in the project part ways with Swickle and Samuel, both positive actions.
When asked how he makes a living now Mannone said “In addition to serving on the Management Committee of Market Street Properties, I am a consultant to the telecommunication industry specializing in land use and leasing matters, as well as a legal consultant to the environmental industry focusing on reuse of brownfield sites throughout the United States.”
