For those of you without a subscription to the AJC, heres an excerpt from todays interview by Howard Pousner with WAC board chairman Doug Hertz - his first since the lockout began. For someone with such a family history rooted in support of the arts in Atlanta, he says some incredibly disturbing and insensitive things, and now its not so surprising that the ASO is in this mess. At first I was going to post all of my personal responses to his statements, but I thought its best to just let him speak for himself. If youre curious, Im happy to share. :) Stay strong, crazy people! ------------------------------------------------------------ Douglas Hertz, that board’s chairman, has not actively participated in the negotiations and was content to stay out of the media glare. But the steady stream of Players’ Association accusations, including that Woodruff leaders have engineered ASO deficits so as to extract more concessions from the locked-out musicians, have sparked him to speak publicly about the debacle for the first time. In an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Hertz firmly denied allegations that the Governing Board is willing to permanently damage the ASO for the sole purpose of halting its losses. He said he was anxious for both sides to return to the business of music, and that one reason he was coming forward was to push the Players’ Association to accept federal mediation. In fact, the U.S. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service announced Friday that it will provide mediation services to the ASO starting next week. Hertz, an Atlanta native and president and CEO of United Distributors, a beverage distribution company, grew up in a family grounded in philanthropy and arts patronage. The Alliance Theatre’s Hertz Stage was named for Hertz’s father, Jennings Hertz Jr. With a gift of $1 million, Doug Hertz endowed the ASO’s Jill Hertz Chair, named for his mother, who herself was an orchestra volunteer. But while saying he believes the musicians and ASO and Woodruff leaders can forge a harmonious agreement with the mediator’s help, he also took some hard stands in the recent AJC interview. On public support of the musicians and rebukes of ASO and Woodruff leaders in media coverage and blogs: “I disagree that the public has sided with the musicians. I think the artists’ friends have sided with the artists. But I think the corporate community and the philanthropic community understands, like any businessperson would, we’re not going to make an investment in a business that keeps losing money.” On charges that Woodruff leaders want to turn the ASO into a minor-league ensemble to save money: “It’s frustrating, because the whole allegation, whether it’s by musicians or supporters of musicians, or journalists who want to take the musicians’ side — I’m using ‘journalists’ pretty loosely … for them to allege that the WAC doesn’t want a fantastic symphony orchestra, or the governing board doesn’t want to take care of the musicians, is so far off base if they looked at the facts.” As evidence, Hertz mentioned the work of other Woodruff governing board members including retired BellSouth executive Jere Drummond, “whose raised millions of dollars for the ASO’s endowment” and Paul Garcia, the recently retired Global Payments chairman and CEO, who along with Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson raised nearly $1.5 million over the last two years to reduce the orchestra’s deficit. “It makes you wonder, you know,” Hertz said, “are we supporting a bunch of crazy people.” On a major point he feels is lost in the contract issues: “The sad part of it is … there are not enough people that care. If the public cared maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation. When you’ve got less than 5,000 donors in a metropolitan area of 5 million, that’s my concern. We (board, administration and musicians) need to be getting together and figuring out together how do we grow support for the symphony.” On the musicians’ response that management’s “last, best and final” offer before the lockout left them no room to negotiate: “Well, we are very interested in exploring alternatives. We are not, cannot and will not move from ending up with a balanced budget moving forward. But there are a lot of ways to get there, and if we were to do it together, we may be able to find a way.” On if that means that leadership would reconsider its position on giving management power over filling positions — essentially ultimate control of the size of the orchestra: “Sure. We’re not stuck on anything other than a balanced budget. We would love to protect the integrity of the art, and we want to do it in a financially responsible way.”
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 23:32:10 +0000
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