Pasadena OKs Audit of Job Practices After Charges of Bias

For four months, ugly charges of racism and sexism have haunted the graceful Italian Renaissance hallways of Pasadena City Hall, a building that residents like to tout as a little-known retreat, with its interior gardens and courtyard fountain.

But that retreat has come to resemble a fortress as blacks cite what they call unsatisfactory affirmative action statistics, rumors at City Hall and poor treatment of five black city employees as reasons to accuse the city of discrimination. They have repeatedly called for an external audit of the city’s personnel practices.

Last week, the Pasadena Board of Directors finally consented to that audit. At an estimated cost of $100,000, the audit will examine the city’s personnel practices for the past five years to determine whether the city’s policies are racist or sexist.

Still, the unrest within the black community persists.

On Saturday, more than 60 people and speakers from the Urban League, the NAACP and five other organizations turned out for a rally designed to show that the black community is united in its quest to end racism.

“We see the constant removal of blacks from any advancement opportunity in this city,” said rally speaker Tony Stewart, president of the Altadena branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “The same Reaganism that was then, is now and will continue until we black people stop it.”

City Manager Donald McIntyre, who is retiring in June after 17 years in City Hall, calls the activism an attempt by politically motivated blacks to influence the board’s choice for his successor.

But blacks cite a different reason for their activism.

“(Black) people in career paths that should lead to administrative positions are being buffeted about,” said Ibrahim Naeem , director of the Pasadena-Foothill Branch of the Los Angeles Urban League.

Mike Milliner, president of the Pasadena Black Municipal Employees Assn., put it more bluntly: “We’re on the outside. We’re in a room and there’s a pie being cut and everybody has a knife except us.”

At the center of the controversy are:

* Doren Wade, the city’s former community block grant administrator who lost his six-year post in July because of budget cuts. He was given a 90-day temporary job and later offered a permanent but lesser position--with the same pay--in the program. Wade filed a grievance against the city, and the city found against him.

* Eugene Stevenson, who was acting health director for 18 months and was passed over when a permanent director was chosen. Stevenson’s former job as director of the Jackie Robinson Recreation Center is still reserved for him.

* Prentice Deadrick, acting director of the Jackie Robinson Recreation Center, who was hired as a temporary employee in November, 1987, to fill the vacancy created when Stevenson left. He worked for the city for two years before he was appointed Friday to a permanent job.

* Deweylene Henry, who is director of Employment Development and Community Services. She was placed on administrative leave and told to seek counseling after she was accused of gossiping and complaining that interfered with her job. Through her attorney, Henry said she was speaking out on racist and sexist practices by the city.

* Gerda Steele, director of the Commission on the Status of Women. Steele resigned, saying that women employees suffer sexual harassment at City Hall but seldom complain for fear of job reprisals.

McIntyre insists that those black employees simply are five people with changing job circumstances. He points to reports that show the city is meeting its affirmative action obligations.

In those reports, Ramon Curiel, Pasadena’s affirmative action director, placed the city’s employment of minorities on par with other California cities with large minority populations. Pasadena’s minorities make up 53.7% of the city’s estimated 130,000 residents. That includes 25% black, 18.6% Latino and 5.9% Asian.

Blacks hold about 25% of the city’s jobs but are concentrated in lower-paying positions, Curiel said. For example, blacks hold eight of 58 jobs classified as administrators or officials. Blacks also hold 104 of 203 jobs classified as service or maintenance.

Blacks might not have made such a fuss over the statistics or the five black employees were it not for the status of one white employee--Dave Jacobs, a 21-year City Hall veteran who began as a police officer and was named head of the city’s Risk Management Department earlier this year.

Jacob got his job as head of the department after the Community Services Agency that he headed was disbanded. Blacks perceived that move as preferential treatment, especially because others--such as Wade, Steele and Henry--who all had worked under Jacobs now face employment difficulties.

“Most people would have been willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but the Jacobs case is such a stark counterpoint,” said City Director Rick Cole.

Jacobs’ advancement was repeatedly cited by blacks as an example of an “old boys’ network” that favors whites over minorities.

Other blacks, some of whom worked under Jacobs and asked not to be identified, accused Jacobs of granting preferential treatment to a secretary he was dating while he headed Community Services.

Jacobs denied the allegations. The secretary was transferred out of his supervision before he ever began dating her, he said.

For some, the incident illustrates the pressure blacks face to be City Hall “team players.” Only blacks that follow City Hall status quo and avoid criticizing their superiors receive promotions, Milliner said.

“We’re asked, ‘Who do we work for, the city or the community?’ ” Milliner said.

The audit will examine the city’s personnel practices to determine whether racism or sexism exists at City Hall.

“This is very sensitive,” said Chris Holden, the city’s only black director and son of Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden. “I can’t emphasize hard enough that this has to come out as clean and as honest as possible. Anything that looks like a whitewash and we’ve had it.”

Indeed, black discontent spreads to the city’s northwest neighborhood, where blacks expected more from a $37-million improvement plan than was delivered.

Speakers at Saturday’s rally talked of their disappointment with the city’s Northwest Pasadena Community Plan, a five-year program to improve sidewalks, code enforcement and build fire stations.

The improvements were made as promised and paid for by the city, but the plan had nonetheless created expectations that the entire neighborhood would be revitalized. “It was oversold as a big panacea,” Cole said. “People now look at the Northwest and say, ‘Where is it?’ ”

Also mentioned at the rally was an incident that occurred more than a year ago, but still angers Pasadena’s black community. After the Memorial Day weekend in 1988, racial epithets were found scrawled on the walls of the Community Service Agency’s third-floor offices. No suspects were ever identified.

“We have thrown off the yoke of physical and legal racism over the last 20 or 30 years with the fight for voting rights and against the Jim Crow laws,” Milliner said. “The thing we’re dealing with now is the psychological yoke.”