Unwritten ‘$10,000 Rule’ Still a Puzzlement

A roster of the Pacific Symphony Board of Directors released this week lists Dr. John X. R. Basile as a full member even though he has yet to meet a mysterious, “unwritten” requirement cited in barring him from a crucial board meeting earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Ken Waggoner, who has been the board’s lawyer for two years, joined the growing number of board members and associates who say they never heard of the requirement, that new members pass exams determining their ability to raise or donate $10,000. “I don’t know where this came from,” Waggoner said. “I don’t know about any $10,000 rule.”

Board chairman Michael N. Gilano this week repeated that the requirement is “mandatory.” Yet, at the same time, he acknowledged that as far as he knows, the only time the requirement ever has been invoked was when he himself invoked it--in a phone call to Basile--hours before a board meeting on Feb. 22 at which conductor Keith Clark was fired.

Gilano, a Clark opponent, told Basile, whom he knew to be acquainted with Clark’s manager, to stay away from the meeting. The vote against Clark that night was 12 to 11.

About a month ago, 35 musicians signed a petition calling the vote “questionable.” The author of the petition said the call from Gilano to Basile was a major concern.

Asked this week if Basile ever passed the financial exam, Gilano said he had intended to pursue the matter after the Clark vote but never did.

Gilano still maintains that his call to Basile was rooted in concern over the neurosurgeon’s ability to raise money for the orchestra, even though Gilano has acknowledged that many board members have given nowhere near $10,000.

The call, Gilano said, “was not an attempt to have (Basile) not come, to have him not vote for Keith.”

Gilano said board minutes support his story and offered to show the minutes to a reporter. But when the reporter pressed the point, Gilano refused to supply them and said the reporter should go through board president John R. Evans, who was unavailable.

Basile says he is willing to accept Gilano’s assertion that confusion, as opposed to improper intent, was the behind the phone call.

“I know it sounds a little off kilter, but we have to accept these things,” Basile said.

The phone call is only one aspect of the Clark vote that raised eyebrows. There also is the matter of a woman who rarely attended board meetings but who, Clark supporters say, was lobbied to attend the crucial February session by those opposing the conductor.

Ruth Salaets says she was not lobbied. She acknowledged, however, that she doesn’t “go to very many board meetings” because of other demands on her time. Asked why she had attended this particular session, she said:

“I’d rather not say how that came about. Please talk to the board president. He asked us all not to talk about this.”

She would not say how she voted.

Asked if there had been much lobbying behind the vote, Gilano answered: “Keith Clark lobbied me. . . . In the year 1960, President Kennedy won by a mere 100,000 popular votes. And the country lived with it even though Richard Daley is said to have helped the Kennedy victory by using the dead from Chicago’s graveyards to change the vote total.

“If it was one vote going the way with Keith, I would have said that was the way we should all go,” Gilano added. “If it had gone the other way, we would have had to live with the letter of the law.”