By Marven Goodman | The Sooner Sentinel
October 2, 2026
Something unusual is happening inside Edmond City Hall.
On September 28, the Edmond City Council convened a special meeting concerning the employment of City Attorney Madeline Sawyer.
Council members disappeared behind closed doors into executive session. When they emerged, Ward 4 Councilman Phil Fraim moved to place Sawyer on administrative leave with pay pending further review.
The vote was 4–1.
Ward 1 Councilwoman Maggie Murdock Nichols cast the lone dissenting vote. The council then voted unanimously to install Assistant City Attorney Taylor Clark as acting city attorney. And that was essentially all the public was told.
That would be noteworthy under almost any circumstances. But these aren’t ordinary circumstances.
Less than two weeks earlier, Sawyer had dismissed a public-intoxication charge against Oklahoma Secretary of State Ben Lepak, a member of Governor Kevin Stitt’s administration who had experienced two previous alcohol-related encounters with law enforcement.
And before either of those events, Sawyer herself had been at the center of another controversy involving an encounter with a middle-school student—an incident investigated by Edmond police and addressed administratively by Edmond Public Schools.
These three episodes raise three different questions. What happened during Sawyer’s encounter with the student? Why did Oklahoma’s secretary of state receive an unusually favorable disposition in Edmond Municipal Court? And perhaps most importantly: Why has the Edmond City Council now placed its chief attorney on taxpayer-funded administrative leave?
At present, nobody outside City Hall can responsibly say the three events are connected. But neither should taxpayers be expected to pretend the chronology doesn’t exist.
The Basketball Game
The first controversy predates the Lepak case by nearly two years.
Sawyer became Edmond city attorney in January 2024 after serving as an assistant city attorney from July 2021 through December 2023.
Her position is significant. Under Edmond’s municipal code, the city attorney isn’t merely a lawyer who reviews contracts and attends council meetings. The city attorney serves as the prosecuting officer of Edmond Municipal Court, advises the mayor and council on legal matters and represents the city in litigation. In other words, Sawyer occupied an office entrusted with considerable governmental authority.
Then came an incident at a middle-school basketball game on November 14, 2024.
According to an Edmond Police Department investigative report, the controversy originated with an earlier interaction involving Sawyer’s daughter and another student. Sawyer told investigators that her daughter had reported being called an offensive name by the boy following a discussion involving the 2024 presidential election.
Neither Sawyer nor her daughter initially reported that alleged conduct to the school, according to the police investigation. Instead, Sawyer later encountered the student at a basketball game. What happened next became disputed. The student’s father subsequently filed a police report alleging Sawyer had threatened his son. Sawyer denied threatening him.
The police investigation therefore contained competing accounts—a distinction that matters enormously.
An allegation is not a conviction. And government officials possess the same right to due process as everyone else.
But the episode was serious enough for Edmond Public Schools to take administrative action restricting Sawyer’s attendance at certain school activities. The police report also shows investigators recognized a potential conflict if the matter involving Edmond’s own city attorney were handled through Edmond’s municipal system.
That fact alone illustrates the unusual position Sawyer occupied. She wasn’t simply another parent involved in a school dispute. She was Edmond’s chief municipal lawyer and prosecutor.
Government power requires something private citizens do not owe the public: accountability.
Yet what happened next was equally interesting. Sawyer survived the controversy. More than survived it, actually.
On March 10, 2025, the Edmond City Council unanimously approved increasing Sawyer’s salary to grade 32, step 3, retroactively effective January 4. Councilwoman Stacie Peterson publicly expressed appreciation for Sawyer’s work.
Whatever concerns existed over the basketball incident, they plainly weren’t enough at that time to cost Sawyer the confidence of the council. That becomes important when examining what happened next.
The Secretary of State
On the night of August 14, 2026, Edmond police were dispatched to a McDonald’s shortly before 11 p.m. The individual officers encountered was not an anonymous citizen. It was Benjamin Michael Lepak, Oklahoma’s secretary of state.
According to the police report, Lepak exhibited “extremely slurred speech,” smelled of alcohol and had difficulty maintaining a coherent train of thought. Lepak initially denied drinking before later acknowledging that he had consumed a beer.
His vehicle was at the restaurant. The police report states that it appeared Lepak had driven there. He wasn’t charged with DUI. Instead, officers arrested him for public intoxication. Body-camera footage subsequently transformed what might otherwise have remained a routine municipal misdemeanor into a statewide political controversy.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond watched the footage and publicly demanded that Governor Kevin Stitt remove Lepak from office. Drummond described Lepak as “thoroughly inebriated” and called his conduct unbecoming of a high-ranking state official.
But there was another reason the incident attracted attention. It wasn’t Lepak’s first alcohol-related encounter with law enforcement.
Three Incidents in Five Years
In 2021, police in The Village found Lepak asleep behind the wheel of a pickup. Court records show he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of actual physical control of a vehicle while intoxicated and transporting an open container. He received a one-year deferred sentence, probation and a six-month ignition-interlock requirement.
Then came 2022. Edmond police encountered Lepak after his vehicle was stopped on East Danforth Road with a damaged tire. According to the police report, the officer observed slurred speech and swaying. Lepak eventually pleaded no contest to public intoxication.
Then came August 2026.
Three alcohol-related law-enforcement encounters in approximately five years. That history doesn’t prove guilt in the newest case. Each prosecution must stand on its own evidence.
But it makes the eventual disposition of the 2026 case considerably more worthy of public scrutiny.
Then the Charge Disappeared
On September 16, Sawyer filed a notice dismissing Lepak’s public-intoxication charge with costs. The stated justification was unusual. According to the dismissal notice, Lepak was: “verifiably engaged in services more appropriate than those provided through the Court.”
Sawyer concluded dismissal was in the “best interest of justice.”
What services? The public wasn’t told. Why were those services sufficient to eliminate the prosecution? The public wasn’t told. Were ordinary defendants offered the same opportunity? That’s where this story becomes considerably more interesting.
KFOR reviewed 305 public-intoxication cases filed in Edmond since September 2025. Among 181 completed cases, approximately 76 percent resulted in convictions.
KFOR further examined 98 defendants who paid the full $280 fine and costs. Seventy-two were convicted. Another 21 reportedly pleaded no contest and completed approximately six months of probation before obtaining dismissal.
Only three defendants—including Oklahoma Secretary of State Ben Lepak—paid the amount while avoiding both conviction and probation.
That statistic doesn’t prove corruption. It doesn’t prove Sawyer received a telephone call from anyone. It doesn’t prove Governor Stitt, his administration or anyone else exerted influence. And The Sooner Sentinel will not manufacture evidence that doesn’t exist.
But the statistic absolutely establishes a legitimate question: Was the same prosecutorial discretion available to the ordinary citizen standing before Edmond Municipal Court?
Because equal justice doesn’t mean prosecutors can never exercise discretion. It means your name, title and political connections should not determine how that discretion is exercised.
Prosecutorial Discretion Is Government Power
Limited-government conservatives should be particularly careful here.
The answer isn’t automatically to demand harsher prosecution. Quite the opposite.
The Sooner Sentinel has repeatedly argued that government possesses too much power over ordinary citizens.
Prosecutors should have discretion. Police should have discretion. Judges should have discretion. Not every mistake requires the full machinery of government punishment. But discretion without transparency can become something else entirely.
When government gives an ordinary defendant six months of probation but allows a politically powerful defendant to leave without it, government should be able to explain the distinction. Perhaps there is a perfectly legitimate explanation.
Maybe Lepak entered substance-abuse treatment. Maybe there were evidentiary problems. Maybe mitigating circumstances existed that aren’t apparent from the police report. If so, say so—to the extent privacy law permits—and explain the policy and criteria, rather than revealing protected medical information.
The public doesn’t need Lepak’s private treatment records. It does need to know whether John Q. Taxpayer receives the same opportunity.
Part III: The Closed Door
Then came September 28.
The Edmond City Council called a special meeting dealing specifically with Sawyer’s employment. Council members entered executive session. Sawyer eventually joined them.
When the council returned to public session, Fraim moved to place Sawyer on administrative leave with pay pending further review. Watterson seconded. Mayor Mark Nash, Fraim, Watterson and Barry Moore voted yes. Murdock Nichols voted no.
The council then unanimously installed Taylor Clark as acting city attorney. The public explanation? Essentially none.
That leaves an extraordinary chronology:
September 16: Sawyer files the Lepak dismissal.
September 23: News of the dismissal becomes public and questions arise about how Lepak’s treatment compares with other defendants.
September 25: News breaks that the council has called a special meeting concerning Sawyer’s employment.
September 28: The council places Sawyer on paid administrative leave.
Correlation is not causation. That sentence needs to be printed in bold letters across this investigation.
In fact, council members Murdock Nichols and Watterson reportedly told The Oklahoman before the meeting that Sawyer’s employment review was not related to the Lepak case. Multiple sources also reportedly told NonDoc the Lepak dismissal wasn’t the driving factor.
Those statements matter. But they create another obvious question: Then what is it about?
The Missing Explanation
Consider the situation from the taxpayer’s perspective. Edmond residents employ a city attorney.
Their elected council has apparently discovered or confronted something serious enough that four members believe their city attorney shouldn’t presently perform her job. Yet taxpayers continue paying her. They are simultaneously paying government employees to perform the legal work from which she has been removed.
And the taxpayers financing all of this have not been told why.
Personnel laws and legitimate employee privacy interests obviously exist. Government shouldn’t publish every accusation made against an employee simply to satisfy public curiosity. But Sawyer isn’t an obscure clerical employee. She is—or at least was immediately before being placed on leave—the city’s chief legal officer and municipal prosecutor.
Her exercise of governmental power directly affects citizens. There is a difference between protecting legitimate personnel information and using “personnel matter” as a curtain behind which government avoids accountability.
Three Stories—or One?
The temptation is to connect everything.
The basketball controversy. The Lepak dismissal. The administrative leave. That temptation should be resisted until evidence establishes a connection.
The basketball incident occurred in 2024. The council subsequently gave Sawyer a salary increase in 2025. That makes it difficult to argue—without additional evidence—that the old controversy alone suddenly triggered the September 2026 action.
Likewise, two council members have explicitly denied that the Lepak dismissal caused the employment review. We should take those statements seriously. But if neither known controversy explains the council’s action, then something else apparently does.
And that unknown fourth element may ultimately become the biggest part of this story.
The Questions Edmond Should Answer
The Sooner Sentinel believes Edmond taxpayers deserve answers to several straightforward questions:
What general category of concern caused four council members to place Sawyer on paid administrative leave?
When did council members first become aware of that concern?
Did the concern arise before or after Sawyer dismissed the Lepak prosecution?
Did Sawyer consult any elected official, state official, city employee or outside attorney before dismissing Lepak’s charge?
What written policy governs diversion, treatment-related dismissal or “services more appropriate” than municipal court?
How many defendants have received comparable dismissals during Sawyer’s tenure?
Were Lepak’s previous alcohol-related cases considered when deciding whether dismissal served the interests of justice?
Has the city initiated an investigation into Sawyer’s conduct, and if so, who is conducting it?
What is Sawyer being paid while on leave, and what additional taxpayer expense will result from replacing her duties during that period?
What event occurred between the council’s 2025 vote expressing confidence in Sawyer and its September 2026 decision to remove her temporarily from office?
None of those questions requires assuming Sawyer did anything wrong.
They require assuming something much simpler: Citizens have a right to scrutinize the government they pay for.
Equal Justice Is the Real Story
It would be easy to turn this into another Oklahoma political soap opera.
Stitt versus Drummond. Republican versus Republican. City Hall versus the State Capitol. That misses the larger point.
Government derives its legitimacy from applying laws impartially. The politically connected shouldn’t receive harsher treatment because they’re unpopular. But neither should they receive favorable treatment unavailable to the mechanic, waitress, small-business owner or construction worker appearing before the same court.
And when a government attorney who exercises that prosecutorial power is suddenly placed on taxpayer-funded leave, citizens shouldn’t have to assemble the explanation from rumors and closed-door meetings.
Perhaps Madeline Sawyer did absolutely nothing improper in dismissing Ben Lepak’s case. Perhaps the council’s employment action involves something entirely unrelated. Perhaps the middle-school controversy has nothing whatsoever to do with either. All three propositions may ultimately prove true.
But government transparency doesn’t exist merely for those occasions when officials have something embarrassing to hide. Transparency exists so citizens can determine for themselves whether government acted properly.
That distinction lies at the heart of limited government.
Government should possess only the power necessary to perform legitimate public functions. Taxes should be no higher than necessary to finance those functions. Regulation should interfere with peaceful citizens as little as reasonably possible.
And when government exercises one of its most serious powers—the authority to arrest, prosecute and punish—it should exercise that power equally.
No special justice for Republicans. No special justice for Democrats. No special justice for governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state or city attorneys. And no second-class justice for everybody else.
For now, Edmond taxpayers are paying their city attorney not to work while another attorney performs her duties.
They know what their government did. They still don’t know why. The Sooner Sentinel intends to keep asking.
Because when government closes the door, taxpayers have every reason to knock.