Right for the Job?

Between the time that Martin Wiviott and Keith Stava said goodby to the Long Beach Civic Light Opera last August and that Barry Brown said hello in September, the LBCLO board of directors had created a controversial new salaried position.

Gordon F. James, former chairman of the board of directors and founder of the Diamond Terrace Foundation (the fund-raising arm of Long Beach Civic Light Opera), was made chief executive officer of LBCLO. The action, which board chairman Lee Anderson said had been under discussion for at least two years, did not exactly split the board but it did provoke anger at the annual meeting in September.

Ned Gaylord, a former president of LBCLO and past member of the board of directors and board of trustees, said he spoke out against the James appointment because “the chairman (of the board of directors) is supposed to be doing that job. (James) is now doing for money what he was doing for free. It’s wrong, especially since we’re a nonprofit organization. I was president (of LBCLO) for four years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and I did the same job for nothing. So did all the other presidents after me.”

The CEO’s job is to oversee artistic director Brown and executive director Pegge Logefeil and the LBCLO staff operations. It does not include fund-raising, though James, 52, a retired haberdasher with a reputation as a fund-raising wizard, said he’ll continue raising funds. His salary, undisclosed, is said to be about $80,000 a year.

Anderson, who proposed James for the job, maintains that the work had become too intensive in recent years to be done on a volunteer basis. She defended James’ appointment, saying, “We can never be sure of anything we do, but he’s been a pillar of the CLO in a volunteer position, he has knowledge of the organization, he was chairman for a year and has done a great job raising funds for us. We felt he was the best person for the job.”

Brown, who arrived on the scene after the James appointment, acknowledged that “there has been controversy over his appointment.” He added: “There has been a faction of the board that was asking the same questions you ask.”

According to James: “Basically they offered me the job because I’m the one man who understands how this organization works.”

However, a source close to LBCLO, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the position was created at James’ own request and without the support of anyone on the staff.

James flatly denied this, citing the position of Esther Wachtell at the Los Angeles Music Center as being another example of a volunteer post having been turned into a salaried one by the growing demands of the job.

“It’s not unusual for such an organization to have a CEO, but I think it’s unusual for Long Beach,” said Sandra Gibson, executive director of the Long Beach-based Public Corporation for the Arts. “I think it was the timing that bothered some people. It’s probably only a sign of growth.”