For the past seven months, a top prosecutor in the Sarpy County Attorney’s Office, a lawyer making more than $140,000 a year, has been paid by the county to stay home.

The Sarpy County Board blocked him from offices in the courthouse and revoked his access to the computer systems and files he’d need to do his job.

The prosecutor’s sidelining, following accusations of misconduct and an internal investigation, has laid bare a power struggle between the longtime elected county attorney, who has refused to dismiss the prosecutor, and the elected county board, which has demanded he be fired.

The county attorney has filed a lawsuit, arguing the county board overstepped its authority. Meanwhile, the dispute’s price tag continues to climb, with more than $300,000 spent on investigators, legal representation, a separation agreement with another employee and paying the top prosecutor not to work.

Longtime County Attorney Lee Polikov said the investigation concerned an interoffice relationship and a disagreement over whether that relationship was consensual. Court filings do not specify the alleged misconduct, and the county board has refused to detail it, citing privacy and “the sensitivity of the issues involved.”

The intra-county tug of war has left the prosecutor in a professional purgatory one legal expert labeled “the theater of the absurd.”

On July 1, Polikov re-filed a lawsuit against the county board — which controls the county attorney’s budget — arguing it is infringing on his ability, backed by state law, to run his office.

“Nobody can come in and extort me … to make a decision,” Polikov said during an interview. “If you allow that to happen once, when does it stop?”

The five-member board — which includes a retired Air Force colonel and a former Gretna mayor — says state law requires it to protect the county from “similar misconduct or retaliation in the future.”

“The Board respects the guardrails on its authority over independent elected officials,” wrote Don Kelly, vice chair of the county board, in a statement emailed to the Flatwater Free Press. “It is ultimately the Board’s responsibility, however, to protect the taxpayers’ money and the County’s 700 other employees.”

Polikov, who has been county attorney since 1999, told the Flatwater Free Press he’s determined to take the case to trial.

Both sides have hired outside counsel. Polikov said the county is on the hook to pay for both lawyers, though the county board said it “will never” pay for Polikov’s attorney.

The suit is the latest controversy for Sarpy County, where at least four top officials have been reprimanded or fired in recent years for fraud, mismanaging taxpayer money or alleged misconduct.

Typically, elected officials like the county attorney have control over their employees, said Jon Cannon, executive director of the Nebraska Association of County Officials. But he said it does sometimes make sense for a county board to get involved — for example, if an assessor hired a person with several drunken-driving arrests to drive around the county evaluating properties.

With no information about what the attorney is accused of doing, Cannon said it’s hard to evaluate whether the board’s actions were justified.

But whatever the outcome, it may set a standard other Nebraska counties must follow.

“It’s two fundamental truths of county government: The offices have authority over who they hire and fire and the county board is responsible for the courthouse and budget,” he said.

In June, a judge dismissed Polikov’s original lawsuit, citing a lack of factual allegations, though he gave Polikov a month to file an amended complaint. The judge also dismissed the county itself from the lawsuit, citing immunity that protects governments from lawsuits. But he denied board members’ attempts to also be dismissed from the suit. Polikov filed his amended complaint July 1.

Anthony Schutz, a University of Nebraska College of Law professor specializing in state and constitutional law, said he thinks the county board is overstepping its authority and has “descended into the theater of the absurd” by barring the top prosecutor from offices where he’s employed.

“You’re just trying to use levers that you have in order to pull one that you can’t pull, which is to fire the guy,” Schutz said. “That’s usually not the way government is supposed to work.”

In his statement, Kelly said the board is confident that if Cannon or Schutz were confronted with the evidence gathered during the outside investigation into the county attorney’s office, they would support the board’s approach. He noted that the board has an obligation to citizens to manage county assets “in a manner that mitigates risk.”

The prosecutor’s absence — by late June, he’d been paid more than $80,000 since having his access revoked — has made it harder to prosecute murder trials, which the attorney was uniquely skilled to handle, Polikov wrote in a filing.

The county board has already spent more than $42,000 defending itself. Polikov said his lawyer hasn’t billed the county yet. Polikov said he did not know how much time the outside lawyer had spent on the case or what his hourly rate is.

The cost — in time and money — is frustrating, Polikov said, but the issue is important.

“I gotta be right by the law,” he said.

The county board’s investigation into Polikov’s office and the top prosecutor began in July 2024, he said. Polikov said he had disciplined the employee but declined to detail it. Kelly said in a statement that Polikov had not reported any such disciplinary action to the county board and noted that Polikov had not cooperated with either the board or the county’s human resources department.

Polikov said the allegations and investigation did not impact the prosecutor’s work.

“I don’t want to dig into people’s lives too much, because you never know what you’re going to come up with,” he said. “I just measure the work value: Are they following a philosophy that I like to hope that they follow, my philosophy of prosecution and law and order.”

In August, the county board approved a separation agreement with another attorney, which Polikov said was related to the misconduct investigation. That employee was paid $111,404.58, equivalent to nine months of their salary and benefits, and agreed not to pursue litigation.

The attorney who signed the separation agreement declined to speak to the Flatwater Free Press. The prosecutor who is being paid but is barred from work didn’t return phone calls and emails seeking comment.

The Flatwater Free Press is not naming either of the attorneys involved in the dispute because of the nature and lack of clarity around the alleged misconduct.

The outside attorney hired to investigate the county attorney’s office presented her findings to the board and Polikov on Nov. 19, according to Kelly.

Twice later that month, Polikov declined to offer details on how he would proceed, the county board’s statement said. Then-Board Chair Angi Burmeister told him the board needed to know his decision by Dec. 2.

On Dec. 4, the county board’s counsel sent a letter requesting Polikov fire the top prosecutor, in part to “deter similar misconduct” in the future, a court filing reads.

Polikov declined. Six days later, the board revoked the attorney’s access to county property. Polikov wrote he felt threatened that the board would release information related to “various investigations” and filed his lawsuit in January.

This is at least the fourth time in the past four years that Sarpy County has dealt with alleged misconduct by county officials.

The board fired County Treasurer Brian Zuger in 2021 for financial mismanagement, including miscalculating millions of dollars worth of payments to school districts, highlighted in a report from the Nebraska State Auditor’s Office.

In October 2023, a federal court sentenced Paula Creps, the director of the county’s Court Appointed Special Advocates, to six months in prison and three years of parole for fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Omaha indicted Creps for using $45,000 meant to help foster kids for personal expenses, including fixing her car and paying for a luau on a Hawaiian vacation.

Last year, in an attempt to be more accountable, Nebraska’s fastest-growing county hired a company to operate an independent whistleblower system for citizens, county employees and contractors at a cost of $13,700.

Sarpy County is growing more quickly than any other Nebraska county, adding 80,000 residents and quintupling its budget since 2000 while seeing property value skyrocket, fueled by the boom in suburbs such as Gretna.

“There’s growing pains with that,” said former Sarpy County Public Defender Tom Strigenz, first elected in 2004. “Some of the old-school people (might complain), but change is not bad. Change can be good as long as everyone knows their lanes and stays in their lanes.”

The county board, Strigenz said, is not staying in its lane.

In July 2021, the board publicly accused Strigenz of having a sexual relationship with an employee and giving that employee preferential treatment. During an investigation conducted by outside counsel, Stringenz allegedly “threatened and intimidated” witnesses. He declined to resign and then lost his position in the 2024 election.

Both the county attorney and county board dispute the idea that these cases and the recent lawsuit show a problematic pattern in Sarpy County.

There’s a spotlight on this lawsuit now, Polikov said, but the underlying tension is “politics mixed with personalities,” he said.

In his statement, Kelly said the board “acted within its legal authority to rectify a few unfortunate situations.”

Both sides also agree the lawsuit has led to bad feelings.

“As you can imagine when an attorney files a meritless claim against their own client, there is an impact on the relationship,” Kelly wrote.

The Sarpy County Attorney’s Office prosecutes criminal charges, reviews contracts, handles child support and provides legal advice on a variety of issues, Polikov said. That all runs through his staff, who Polikov said he has kept out of this suit.

This month, Polikov plans to appear before the board to ask for more money in his budget to keep up with the county’s ever-increasing population.

Rodney Wetovick navigated a similar relationship for years in Nance County, about 100 miles west of Omaha. In 2007, Wetovick, the county attorney, sued the board when members refused to let him hire a full-time secretary. He also didn’t have an office, computers, desks, copy machines, chairs or an office phone.

The Nebraska Supreme Court sided with him. The case, and updates to state law, now serves as precedent for similar disagreements in counties, such as Polikov’s suit.

More than a decade later, Wetovick is still in office. Life, and county business, goes on.

“It just comes down to the fact you have to respect them if they have an honest disagreement with you,” Wetovick said of what mended the frayed relationship. “And they have to respect you if you disagree with them.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/sarpy-scuffle-county-attorney-suing-count...