ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : New Effort to Subpoena Raabe Fails : Hearing: The suspended assistant treasurer, ordered into office so he could be served by state Senate committee probing the county crisis, instead sends a note saying he is ill.

Outraged by reports that Matthew Raabe was ducking a state Senate subpoena, Orange County officials tried to force the suspended assistant treasurer to accept service Wednesday by ordering him into the office.

But instead of showing up, Raabe sent his ex-wife with a doctor’s note saying he was too ill to work.

Raabe, who was placed on paid leave last month after accountants discovered evidence of interest skimming in the county’s failed investment pool, sent word that he would be unable to work for four months, according to Assistant County Counsel Laurence M. Watson.

Angered by newspaper accounts that authorities had been unable to locate Raabe this week to serve him with a subpoena for today’s state Senate committee hearing into the county’s financial crisis, Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez asked interim Treasurer Thomas E. Daxon to call Raabe into the office Wednesday afternoon to receive the subpoena.

“To receive a subpoena is just a basic process that one has to deal with in these kinds of circumstances,” Vasquez said. “If there is an employee who is on paid administrative leave and is allegedly eluding the serving of a subpoena, then that’s of great concern to me.”

Daxon ordered Raabe to report to the office at 3 p.m., and arranged for the state Senate’s sergeant at arms to be there with the subpoena.

“Our office is going to cooperate fully with the state Senate and any other proper group that is conducting any type of investigation,” Daxon said. “I do not want there to be any question that our office will cooperate.”

But Raabe didn’t show.

Instead, Sandy Raabe, who works in the county’s personnel department, brought a doctor’s note requesting that her ex-husband be placed on disability leave, Watson said.

Watson said he didn’t know what Raabe’s illness was. Daxon declined to say, adding that he had turned the paperwork over to the county counsel’s office for review.

Raabe and his ex-wife could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Terry W. Bird, declined comment.

Raabe, who started working for the county in 1984 and was promoted to the No. 2 spot at the treasurer’s office in 1993, was one of 13 witnesses called to testify today at the third hearing of the Senate’s special committee on local government investment.

Eight of the other county officials and financial experts on the witness list agreed to come to Sacramento voluntarily. The other four witnesses were served with subpoenas this week.

But Bird notified the Senate committee Tuesday that Raabe “would not voluntarily appear . . . (and) will not appear on Thursday absent a properly served subpoena directing him to do so.”

And when Senate officials tried twice Monday and three times Tuesday to serve Raabe at his Santa Ana home, they found the drapes drawn, according to chief Sergeant at Arms Tony Beard. No one answered when officers rang the doorbell or telephoned the house, Beard added.

On Wednesday, the officers again tried to serve Raabe at his home, then went to his county office for the 3 p.m. meeting Daxon had arranged.

“He’s actively evading this,” Beard said Wednesday. “At some point he’s got to surface. There’s too many people who want to talk to him.”

Though the Senate has the power to issue an arrest warrant for someone evading a subpoena, senators on the special committee said they plan instead to issue another subpoena requiring Raabe to attend their next hearing on March 3.

Times staff writer Eric Bailey in Sacramento contributed to this story.