SANTA CLARITA / ANTELOPE VALLEY : Klajic Assailed for Persistent Pen : Politics: Council member’s letter to Gov. Wilson on city stationery violates policy. Colleagues are outraged.

SANTA CLARITA —  City Council member Jill Klajic is known for her persistent letter writing.

She has fired off missives to Presidents Bush and Clinton suggesting administrative appointments and implored Vice President Al Gore to join her fight against the controversial Elsmere dump.

But her latest dispatch on City Council stationery--asking Gov. Pete Wilson to limit county taxing authority--has earned her the disapproval of colleagues who say the note violates a council directive against sending personal letters under city letterhead.

City Council member Joanne Darcy, who also works as county Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s Santa Clarita field deputy, says Klajic may have stepped over the line this time, damaging not only her own credibility with her colleagues but the relationship between the city and county officials.

“Whether she sent this out knowingly or unknowingly, she could anger counties across the state and it could prove to be an expensive mistake,” she said. “It’s certainly not a goodwill letter.”

Klajic wrote Wilson “to strongly recommend that we do not give counties any additional powers or additional means of taxation.”

In the letter, Klajic complained about such frivolous Los Angeles County government expenses as office remodeling projects and use of stretch limousines by county officers.

Darcy, who brought up the same issue at last week’s council meeting, is particularly concerned with the correspondence, though most council members are unhappy with Klajic.

“I don’t think censuring her does any good because her troops just launch slash-and-burn campaigns,” said Mayor Jan Heidt, whose campaign manager was the recipient of a classic Klajic letter. In the past, Klajic supporters have written letters to the editor, flooded the local paper with phone calls supporting her, and deflected public criticism with “obnoxious testimony” at City Council meetings, Heidt said.

The controversy over Klajic’s letter writing began in April, 1992, when she sent a letter to a top executive of Newhall Land & Farming Co., the region’s largest landowner and developer, justifying her past criticism of the company.

Klajic said her colleagues refused to forget that incident. “That was a year and a half ago, and they act like I do it everyday,” she said.

After the Newhall Land letter, the council adopted a new policy: All correspondence on council letterhead, which bears the names of all five council members, requires prior approval from the body before it is sent.

But the policy has not stopped Klajic. One week before the Wilson letter, Klajic fired off correspondence on council letterhead blasting Heidt’s campaign manager, Mary Merritt, for criticizing Klajic for taking a psychic to Elsmere Canyon to bury crystals, a New Age remedy designed to heal the ground.

Klajic said she didn’t mean to send the Wilson letter out on the council letterhead.

“The last letter just went out by accident,” Klajic explained. “A friend typed it on plain white paper, and I asked a secretary in the city office to type it up and send it out on city stationery.” She said she meant that the letter should have been sent out on her own council letterhead, which is not prohibited by the new policy.

It was a bad week for the council member. The letter was mailed the same week that Klajic’s home was burglarized and valuable documents pilfered from her file, which led her to suspect the break-in was politically motivated and intended to gain information about her upcoming reelection campaign.

Klajic is disappointed that her colleagues are unable to forgive what she considers an honest mistake. She said the whole letter controversy could have been handled “in house” but her enemies want to damage her credibility.

Her critics say the Wilson letter reflects her lack of decorum and refusal to work as a team member on the council.

“I think she does what she wants and doesn’t care what other people think and she plays the victim very well,” Heidt said.

Mayor Pro Tem George Pederson said, “It creates animosity on the board, whenever you tweak your nose at the board and say, ‘I’m going to do what I want,’ it doesn’t help one bit.”

Pederson also doesn’t buy her story that sending the letter out was a mistake.

“I have to believe that the lady knew what she was doing,” he said.

At this point, her colleagues say all they can do is throw up their hands and hope that Klajic doesn’t keep violating the policy.

“I hope she doesn’t do it again, but hope springs eternal,” Darcy said.