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County officials answer subpoenas

By Caroline Trowbridge - | Apr 19, 2000

A Kansas Bureau of Investiga-tion probe into allegations against Leavenworth County officials was kick-started Tuesday.

On Monday, KBI agent Richard Vick served subpoenas on three county commissioners and several other county employees. The summonses ordered the county officials to appear on Tuesday in the office of Frank Kohl, county attorney.

Attempts to contact both Kohl and Vick on Monday and Tuesday were unsuccessful.

The scope of the KBI investigation is not clear. However, in December Kohl forwarded to Vick a complaint from County Commissioner Wayne Eldridge that his fellow commissioners Don Navinsky and Bob Adams violated the Kansas Open Meetings Act.Continued from page 1A

It’s likely that in addition to the open meetings issue, the KBI probe extends into other conduct by commissioners. Two of the meetings contained in Eldridge’s allegations centered on meetings held with Emergency Medical Services employees. The EMS issue has traveled a long route through the county’s legal system.

Kohl’s office had charged EMS director Irene Maley and deputy director Charles Conrad with making a false writing, alleging they had submitted timesheets in 1997 that included overtime hours the two had not worked. Those charges were dismissed in June, Kohl said, after his office received additional information in the case.

Basically, the new information provided by the county commission conflicted with earlier information the county commission had provided, Kohl said. Initially, he said, commissioners had said they had not OK’d the way Maley and Conrad wrote the timesheets. But later in responding to a lawsuit the commission said it had approved Maley and Conrad to handle the timesheets as they did, which led to dismissal of the criminal case against Conrad and Maley. Part of the KBI’s probe likely will attempt to resolve the conflicting statements made by the county commission.