Thank you for the advice.
I was able to create a workaround for my purposes.
1. Create database sequence (assume failure means it already exists):
try:
arcpy.management.CreateDatabaseSequence(r"C:\Users\test\test.sde", "test", 1, 1)
except:
e = sys.exc_info()[1]
if "ERROR 002907: Sequence name is already in use by dataset in workspace." in e.args[0]:
arcpy.AddMessage("Sequence exists")
pass
2. Use Arcade expression to access the sequence
exp = "NextSequenceValue('test')"
arcpy.CalculateField_management(the_layer, the_id_field, exp, "Arcade")