The State : Ex-Judge to Be Tried in S.F.

In exchange for an agreement to plead guilty to one count of tax fraud in a Michigan case, a popular Mendocino radio talk show host and ex-probate judge was permitted to remain in California to have his case adjudicated in San Francisco. Leon Kowalski, 47, had been on the lam from December, 1986, until Internal Revenue Service agents arrested him this month at radio station KMFB, where he worked under the alias “Ed Kowas.” Kowalski, whose show remains on the air, could receive a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a $150,000 fine. Kowalski is accused in an indictment returned by a Grand Rapids, Mich., grand jury of two counts of fraudulently avoiding $75,000 in income taxes in 1981 and 1982.