Official’s Hawaii Residency Assailed : Government: Hawthorne city clerk continues to draw salary despite absence. Officials say it’s legal, but critics find the arrangement scandalous.

Hawthorne City Clerk Patrick E. Keller has been living in Hawaii for at least a year while drawing his $600-a-month city paycheck, an arrangement that city officials say is legal but has outraged local residents.

Keller is an elected official, and the law requires him only to be a registered voter in the city. But critics say it is unconscionable for him to continue earning a paycheck for work he doesn’t perform, and they believe city officials should have been more vigilant.

“I know workers who get written up and suspended if they come into work late a couple of days, and here’s someone who hasn’t been to work in several years and no one’s saying anything about it,” said Paul Krehbiel, a Hawthorne resident who run unsuccessfully for City Council last November. “It’s outrageous. To me, it’s scandalous that something like this could go on.”

Hawthorne Mayor Steve Andersen denied that the council has been negligent. He said that for months he has been urging Keller, who still has a home in Hawthorne, to move back to the city or resign.

“My intent is to try and reason with Mr. Keller,” said Andersen, who expects an answer from Keller in the next couple of weeks. “I think it would be better for all concerned if he were either here or if we could work out, smoothly, some kind of resolution.”

Keller could not be reached for comment in Hawaii.

City officials were unsure when Keller began spending much of the year in Hawaii. But the day-to-day affairs of the city clerk’s office have been managed for some time by a full-time chief deputy and an assistant.

Robin Parker, who has served as chief deputy since 1990, defended Keller’s management style, pointing out that Hawthorne’s municipal code does not require the city clerk to spend time in his office or to perform any duties himself.

Parker said her boss has been at City Hall only about 10 times since 1989 but that she speaks to him on the telephone at least once a week.

“He tells me all the time he has confidence in how I’m handling the duties here,” Parker said. “He says I’m doing an excellent job and that he has no worries on how the office is being conducted.”

Keller, a self-employed real estate appraiser, is midway through his third four-year term as city clerk. The part-time job includes maintaining city resolutions and ordinances, keeping the minutes of the City Council meetings and administering municipal elections. He was first elected to office in 1981 and ran unopposed in the last election in 1989.

Although Keller’s absence has raised eyebrows around City Hall for years, many city officials said it wasn’t until last Monday’s City Council meeting that the issue received a public airing.

Sparking the debate was Frances Stiglich, a 73-year-old Hawthorne resident and frequent council critic, who discovered through a review of city telephone records that Keller has been living out of state.

Stiglich said she became incensed when she discovered that Keller had charged $30 worth of collect calls from his home in Kona, Hawaii, to his Hawthorne office between Sept. 28 and Nov. 6. And she holds the City Council responsible for letting the situation continue.

“It just seems a lot of money is being spent, and I don’t feel it’s right,” Stiglich said. “Why don’t they (council members) make him pay for it? I don’t care if it’s one penny, I want to give that penny to who I want to, and not to him.”

Despite Andersen’s behind-the-scenes attempt to resolve the matter, council members say their hands are tied because Keller was elected and could only be removed from office by a recall.

“We’ve all been concerned about his absence, but there’s nothing we, as a city, can do because he’s elected by the people,” said Councilwoman Betty J. Ainsworth.

But Carol Ann Butler, a member of the executive committee for the City Clerks Assn. of California, took issue with the council’s hands-off approach. She said she was so disturbed to learn of Keller’s long-distance commute that she plans to raise the issue at the board’s next meeting in April.

“To me, it’s like saying, ‘Gee, I guess the job isn’t that important,’ if someone can move to Hawaii and delegate it to someone else,” Butler said. “It’s sort of like a slap toward the profession.”

This isn’t the first time Keller has been involved in controversy. In 1986, Keller was criticized for sending a letter on official stationery urging property owners to attend a City Council meeting where new development standards were being considered.

Some critics contended that Keller, whose election had been supported by a developers’ group, was in violation of state conflict-of-interest codes. The district attorney’s office reviewed the allegations but no charges were filed against him.