Tournament of Roses to Be Scrutinized : Services: An independent analyst will look into how the group profits from its relationship with the city.

The City Council has decided to hire an independent analyst to investigate charges that the Tournament of Roses has, for years, enjoyed a one-sided relationship with the city, reaping benefits and privileges while maintaining a club run exclusively by white men.

It was the latest in a series of setbacks for the 107-year-old volunteer organization, which has been under attack by members of the city’s minority communities for more than a year and a half.

After a contentious hourlong debate, with Councilman Isaac Richard serving as a vocal champion for tournament critics, the council voted Tuesday to delegate an independent lawyer or auditor, rather than to use city staff, to delve into tournament contracts and leases.

Critics have charged that the city has provided free services and ceded valuable properties to the tournament--such as the spaciously elegant Wrigley Mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard, which serves as the tournament’s headquarters--with little benefit to the city as a whole.

“The tournament is the goose that lays the golden eggs,” Richard said. “But we’re not getting any of the gold.”

After the meeting, tournament Assistant Executive Director William Flinn said the organization will cooperate with auditors or investigators.

“Frankly, we welcome an audit,” he said. “We have nothing to hide.”

The organization has been under attack for excluding minorities from its ranks of volunteers since October, 1991, when then-Tournament President Robert Cheney selected a direct descendant of explorer Christopher Columbus as the grand marshal of the 1992 Rose Parade.

The choice was widely criticized as insensitive to American Indians, whose ancestors were killed by disease and violence with the arrival in the New World of the Spanish conquistadors.

Mayor Rick Cole, then the vice mayor, said at the time that the decision reflected “the extreme myopia of an organization totally controlled by aging white men.”

Last month, a group of black Pasadena leaders shifted the debate to economics, charging that the city allows the tournament to ignore minority hiring and subcontracting requirements that are imposed on most contractors. At the same time, say members of the Ad Hoc Group to End Discrimination, the city provides the tournament with a bounty of subsidies and free services.

In a report circulated among city officials, the group charged that the tournament beefs up its own coffers with hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from the Rose Bowl college football game each year, while the city accommodates the tournament by “massively underreporting the cost of the event.”

The city pays for half the cost of police and fire services, which has exceeded $1 million in recent years, and, according to the report, about $700,000 in other services, including the leasing of city property and the use of city staff to help run the event. When profits are balanced against expenses, the report said, the city subsidized the parade and game with a total of $468,000 in services this year.

The tournament is currently in the ninth year of a 25-year contract with Pasadena, which spells out how profits and costs for New Year’s Day activities are shared with the city.

Tournament officials had already agreed to accept an affirmative action addendum to the contract, committing the tournament to recruiting minority employees and minority subcontractors. The tournament has also announced that half of its new volunteers this year will be minorities or women. The tournament expects to recruit about 100 volunteers this year, officials said.

But a succession of speakers at Tuesday’s council meeting demanded outside review of all the financial underpinnings of the tournament, which turns over more than $500,000 a year in profits to the city. Profits vary from year to year, but one of the goals of the independent analysis is to determine just how much the tournament makes from the annual event.

“We don’t feel that city staff will give us a fair review,” said Jim Morris, co-chairman of the group of black leaders, who had threatened to circulate their findings among the tournament’s corporate sponsors.

Albert Lowe, chairman of the tournament’s diversity committee, conceded that the organization had made mistakes in the past, but he said the overwhelmingly white, male membership of the organization is not solely the fault of its leadership.

“I’ve been acquainted with dozens of people of Latino, Asian or black background,” said Lowe, who is Asian-American and the only minority group member in a position of leadership at the tournament. “But not one person ever came to me and said, ‘How do I join the Tournament of Roses?’ ”

The organization is trying to change, Lowe said.

“The tournament is realizing it has a responsibility beyond putting on a parade,” he said.

But several speakers Tuesday said they were not concerned about the number of minorities among the tournament’s 875 volunteers, who dress in white on New Year’s Day to oversee the Rose Parade.

“I’m more concerned about economic justice than the color of the people who wear the white suits,” said Bunny Nightwalker Hatcher, a former member of the city’s Human Rights Commission.

Councilman Richard said that, among other things, the city should be a partner in negotiations between the tournament and the television networks that broadcast the Rose Bowl game, as well as discussions with the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., the parent organization of the teams that play in the game.

“I want to be part of those discussions,” which result in indeterminate amounts of revenue for the tournament, he said.

Richard received support in pressing for an independent analyst from newly elected Councilman Bill Crowfoot, an Anglo whom Richard has repeatedly attacked as undeserving of representing the largely minority constituency in his district.

The tournament is important to Pasadena because it “tells the world who we think we are,” Crowfoot said. But it should not be allowed to “create dissent in the community,” he said.

Crowfoot said an outside analyst could quickly shed new light on the contractual relationship between the city and the tournament, unburdening city officials who are currently engaged in preparing a city budget.

“I don’t know that, in the middle of the budget process, we need to see the finance committee completely absorbed in this issue,” said Crowfoot, referring to a subcommittee of the council that deals with fiscal matters.

A proposal to have city staff report on tournament contracts to the finance committee was defeated by a 3-2 vote Tuesday. The independent auditor measures passed with a 4-1 vote, with Cole and Councilman Chris Holden switching their votes and Councilman William E. Thomson Jr. opposing.