Retired firefighter Paul Hawkins has called upon City Hall and county prosecutors to probe whether two-term Councilman Kit Bobko lives in Hermosa Beach, as he must to hold his elective office.
Bobko called Hawkins’ contentions “a joke” and blamed them on the councilman’s ongoing debates with the Hermosa Beach Firefighters Association, of which Hawkins is a past president. Bobko said he lives in an apartment on 19th Street in Hermosa.
City Attorney Michael Jenkins said an elected official’s legal domicile is one that he calls home, as long as it can be documented on items such as a driver’s license, vehicle registration or voter registration, or the address to which personal mail is delivered.
The issue can become “a bit tricky” if an office holder’s spouse and children live in another home, Jenkins said. Bobko, however, is single.
“We don’t examine the social life of our council members,” Jenkins said. “We don’t follow them around and see where they end up at night.”
Jenkins said he was “assured that Kit will provide some response” to Hawkins’ contentions, in the form of documentation that can be reviewed by city officials.
Mayor Michael DiVirgilio said he has been to Bobko’s Hermosa apartment a number of times.
“I’ve seen it being lived in,” DiVirgilio said, “papers here, dishes there, books lying around.”
In a Monday evening email, Hawkins told City Manager Steve Burrell that police officers do not find Bobko at the apartment when they deliver city correspondence to him as part of their duties, and the apartment appears unoccupied.
“Every police officer I’ve spoken to who has been tasked with delivering city correspondence, several times a month, to his residence of record has said the 19th Street apartment appears unoccupied,” Hawkins wrote.
“Mail is stacked behind the screen door and nobody ever answers the door. Myself and my co-workers have never seen a light on in the apartment when returning from calls at night,” Hawkins wrote.
Bobko said he works long hours as a municipal attorney and often is away early in the morning and late at night.
“It’s disturbing to me that they check to see if the lights are on in my apartment, but that’s life in the big city,” Bobko said.
“Friends have told me they think [Bobko] lives on Paseo de la Concha in the Hollywood Riviera section of Torrance,” Hawkins wrote.
Bobko said he briefly lived with his brother on Paseo de la Concha in 2000, after he passed his bar exam and came to the beach cities. He said he found an apartment in Hermosa within a couple of months, and moved there.
Hawkins, a 30-year Fire Department veteran and recipient of a Sustained Superiority Award under the South Bay Medal of Valor, wrote that as a state retirement system participant, he is concerned about the propriety of a council member’s state pension.
“Additionally, if this allegation is true, every opinion expressed and every vote cast by Mr. Bobko that was harmful to wages and benefits of city employees would warrant a legal remedy,” Hawkins wrote.
“I am requesting an official investigation into this matter. I am forwarding this letter to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and other interested parties,” Hawkins wrote.
“This is such a farce. It’s the spasmodic reaction of someone with an organization that, for whatever reason, feels threatened,” Bobko said, referring to the firefighters’ association.
“If you don’t think this is a blood sport on the local level, you’re wrong,” Bobko said.
DiVirgilio said he believed the email from Hawkins was an attempt at “intimidation” for positions held by Bobko.
Bobko has decried the cost of public employee pensions, recently took part in a heated exchange with an association official regarding the ongoing overhaul of Pier Avenue, and has sharply criticized an association lawsuit over planned pension cuts for future city employees.
