City Attorney Comes Under Fire From Staff, Ex-Workers : City Hall: Accused of sending city of Hawthorne employees on personal errands, he dismisses the allegations.

In sworn statements, seven current and former employees with the Hawthorne city attorney’s office have accused City Atty. Mike Adamson of using city employees to perform personal errands for him “on virtually a daily basis” from August to October of 1988.

The statements, signed and filed with the city clerk in November, 1988, also allege that Adamson refused to answer phone calls from city officials and members of the public and that he ordered staff members to lie about his availability.

The documents, copies of which were recently obtained by The Times, go on to say that Adamson had a longstanding policy forbidding his staff to associate with other city employees and officials.

In an interview Friday, Adamson dismissed the complaints, saying the statements were signed by a group of employees who wanted to discredit him so the City Council will replace him.

Adamson, who reports directly to the council, declined to discuss details but said council members refused to replace him and “reaffirmed their faith” in him by giving him a raise.

Douglas Gates, the city’s personnel director, said Adamson received a 7% raise in October, 1988, but said the pay increase had been approved in contract negotiations in July of that year. Gates said Adamson makes $105,840 a year.

Adamson said everyone in his office has been treated with respect and courtesy and called the allegations old news.

Councilman Steve Andersen said that soon after the complaints were raised, he and other council members met with the disgruntled employees individually and in groups.

Andersen said the council then discussed the matter with Adamson during two separate private meetings, but he said he could not recall when those meetings took place.

Andersen would not say what action the council took except to say that the problem had been addressed.

“I’m told that the situation has cooled off,” he said.

Councilwoman Ginny M. Lambert said the council met with Adamson in private sessions in January and February, but she declined to comment further.

The one-page statements were signed by Deputy City Attys. Marilyn A. Wiczynski and Mark S. Gordon; Ronald T. Pohl, who was then city prosecutor but has since taken a job elsewhere; Jewel Hayes, a legal clerk; Lois Duncan, a legal assistant in charge of risk management and compensation cases; Dennis E. Hernandez, an administrative assistant, and Leona Barron, a secretary who has since transferred to the city’s finance department.

Gates said Adamson had a staff of eight at the time.

The statements said:

“The city attorney has used employees during work hours to perform personal errands for him on virtually a daily basis from Aug. 1, 1988, through Oct. 10, 1988.

“The city attorney has routinely refused to accept phone calls from city officials, attorneys, or the public and requires staff to lie to them about his availability. This conduct was ongoing from Aug. 1, 1988, through Sept. 30, 1988.

“The city attorney has a longstanding policy which was in full force and effect from Aug. 1, 1988, through the present, which violates the staff’s freedom to associate with other city employees or officials.”

Most of the current and former employees who signed the complaint declined to discuss details of the matter or did not return phone calls.

However, one employee who signed the statement but who requested anonymity before commenting said Adamson often asked his clerical workers to wash his city-owned car, bring him lunch and do banking errands for him, among other things.

The employee said Adamson also told his deputy attorneys that he “did not want them associating outside of business hours with any other employees” for fear they would divulge confidential legal information.

According to the employee, Adamson has since made peace with his deputy city attorneys but is still at odds with his secretaries and clerks. “The environment is very depressing,” the employee said.

In the interview Friday, Adamson said that when he became city attorney in January, 1981, it was common practice to ask certain employees to wash the city-owned car and fill it with gasoline.

“I did not adopt any new policy,” he said.

As for the other complaints, Adamson said that some employees have volunteered to perform personal errands for him but he insisted that employees have never been required to handle such tasks.

Adamson said that he is sometimes too busy to accept phone calls and has asked his staff to make excuses for him. “I gotta plead guilty to that one,” he said.

He said that before he learned of his employees’ complaints, he had asked some staff members not to associate with other employees for fear that they would divulge confidential information.

But Adamson said that request was never a policy and said he has since told his staff that they can associate with whomever they choose.

Also filed at the city clerk’s office was a resignation letter from Linda Amorocchi Santos, a legal secretary who had worked for Adamson for 7 1/2 years.

In the December, 1988, letter, Amorocchi Santos described Adamson as “very irrational” and said she was resigning because of the “mental anguish and abuse placed upon me by the city attorney during the past several years.”

In an interview last week, Amorocchi Santos declined to provide details about her resignation and her complaints.

Adamson said he was surprised to learn about the complaints raised by Amorocchi Santos because “if there was a problem I was never told about it.”

Rose McKenney, a legal secretary who was hired in August, 1988, to replace Amorocchi Santos, said that when she was hired, the atmosphere in the office was tense but she said that there has been a “much easier, much lighter environment since then.”

She said she was surprised to learn about her colleagues’ complaints because she said the problems were not major and “there are unhappy employees everywhere you go.”

McKenney discounted the allegation that Adamson prohibits employees from freely associating with other city employees or officials.

“I was never told not to socialize” with other employees, she said.

In January, Adamson’s office came under fire from Inglewood Municipal Court Judge John J. Lynch, who wrote a letter to city officials criticizing the city for typographical and pleading errors in misdemeanor filings. He said the errors led, in some cases, to the prosecution of the wrong person.

In an interview after the letter became public last month, Adamson denied the charges, saying he studied the allegations and found no evidence to support Lynch’s conclusions.