Douglas County’s two school board leaders said Tuesday that allegations that they committed perjury were “partisan” and “baseless,” and they characterized them as an effort to derail the board’s work. 

But the accusations have drawn the attention of local law enforcement, and the district attorney who oversees Douglas County said in a statement that the Sheriff’s Office “currently has an open investigation.”

The response is the latest in a legal — and very public — battle between the board and county resident Robert Marshall, who filed a lawsuit in February accusing the board of violating the state’s open meetings law in the lead-up to terminating its then-superintendent.

Marshall last week released an audio recording that, he argues, proves the board’s leaders committed perjury during a March court hearing.

Scott Gessler and Geoff Blue, the attorneys representing the board and its four leaders, dismissed the allegations Tuesday as a politically motivated attack by Marshall, who’s a Democratic candidate to represent Douglas County in the state House of Representatives.

“The board members were forthright and truthful about their work to replace the former school superintendent, both in court and in private conversations,” Blue said. “Marshall used a secret tape recording to make wild claims of perjury. Our legal team reviewed the materials and found no wrongdoing.”

The recording was taken by former Douglas County School District Superintendent Corey Wise during a late January meeting with board President Mike Peterson and Vice President Christy Williams. During that meeting, Williams and Peterson tell Wise that they’d talked with the board’s other two newly elected members and that they were committed to replacing him. They then told Wise he could either step down within five days or they would seek to fire him for cause.

Wise did not step down. He was fired a week after his meeting with two of his bosses. 

Marshall alleges that the conversations between those four board members — which were one-on-one but linked — and their decision to oust him outside of a public meeting violated the open meetings law. Peterson and Williams have repeatedly denied that allegation, and they did so again in a statement released Tuesday.

But the latest twist in the suit turns on a recording capturing exactly what Peterson and Williams told Wise during their private meeting with him.

At a March hearing about the open meetings suit, Peterson testified that he hadn’t made a decision about Wise’s future until the board formally voted on Feb. 4, a week after he met with Wise. He also testified that he hadn’t asked Wise to “resign immediately”; they had “asked him to consider a variety of options.”

Marshall accused Peterson of committing perjury. He said in a subsequent mass email that law enforcement was aware of his allegation. A spokesman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office wrote in an email Wednesday that “we have received the information and will be looking into it.” 

In a followup statement, District Attorney John Kellner wrote that his office had “received multiple inquiries from citizens regarding allegations of perjury by members of the Douglas County Board of Education. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is aware of the allegations and currently has an open investigation. That agency will review the matter and if appropriate, will forward the case to our office for further review.”

In the statement rebutting the allegations, Peterson accused Marshall of being “more interested in derailing our efforts to improve education in Douglas County.”

He added that he was “focused on academic excellence, increasing teacher pay, and ensuring we meet our mission and vision through common sense initiatives.”

Williams also accused Marshall of “redirecting” focus and said she would not be distracted by “his self-serving lawsuits.” 

Marshall, in his own statement, criticized the board’s attorneys and questioned whether their representation of Peterson and Williams put them at conflict with their duty of defending the entire board; the body’s three, longer-serving members have all publicly questioned their leaders’ actions ahead of Wise’s firing.