Despite suffering twin political blows this week--the visit of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to his City Hall office, and the start of a state inquiry into whether he paid his 1992 income taxes--Cambridge officials say the political future of Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72 is secure.

"He will undoubtedly be re-elected" in 1995, veteran Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55 predicted in an interview yesterday.

City leaders and civic officials say the political fallout from the controversies surrounding the Cambridge's energetic mayor will be, at worst, mild. They say his popularity--especially among the city's minorities and elderly--is sufficient to override criticism from both the media and the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), the city's liberal political group.

But even by his supporters' accounts, the troubles of Reeves, Cambridge's first Black and first gay mayor, are far from over.

FBI Probe

Reeves surprised nearly 200 Cantabrigians Monday night by announcing that he had received two FBI agents in his office. The mayor later revealed that the agents were inquiring about more than $30,000 in extra payments he received from the school committee over a period of nearly two years.

Reeves was paid an annual stipend of $13,000 for his work on the school committee from the time he took office in January 1992 until September 1994. But the mayor's salary--now nearly $44,000 a year--had been adjusted in 1988 to include the school committee stipend. Under the arrangement, Reeves was effectively being paid twice for doing the same job.

When the Cambridge Chronicle reported on the overpayments earlier this fall, they stopped.

Reeves' explanation for the over-payments has changed in the past week. Earlier this month, the mayor claimed that his paychecks had been directly deposited into his personal bank account. He said he was unaware of the overpayments until the Chronicle reported on them.

A school committee official contested his account yesterday.

"Mayor Reeves was paid biweekly with a check," James R. Ball, the school department's public information director, said yesterday.

"It was not directly deposited," Ball said. "It was delivered to his office."

Asked to explain yesterday, Reeves conceded the school committee check had indeed been manually delivered. But he said the checks were signed by his administrative assistant, Kathleen Toppi, and that Toppi had deposited them to his credit union.

It is the city council checks, Reeves said, that are directly deposited to Shawmut Bank.

FBI agents questioned the mayor, City Manager Robert W. Healy and James P. Maloney, assistant! city manager for fiscal operations, while also conducting a federal investigation into corruption in the Cambridge police department.