Berkeley-The “60 pages you can’t see” of documentation regarding the bequest directed to Pacifica Foundation Radio that was incorrectly reported as a restricted donation for the exclusive use of KPFA-Radio, has finally been made available. The national board of directors voted the bequest had been made to the Pacifica Foundation and then to distribute the document package to the network’s five local station boards.
Pacifica in Exile will make the entire document repository available to the network’s members, but is issuing only a partial release at this time, pending consideration of donor privacy interests and vetting of the boards “confidentiality” markings on some of the documents by counsel. We believe a sufficient number of documents are available under these conditions to be of material interest to network members and their concerns about financial transparency.
The first document is the donor’s signed and notarized 2nd amendment to their will stating the bequest to Pacifica Foundation Radio. It reads as follows:
On May 16, 2012, I, Barbara J. Nalbandian-Hall, signed the Barbara J. Nlabandian-Hall Trust (my trust). Section 3.1 of Article 3 of my trust permits me to amend it in writing at any time. This amendment represents the First Amendment to my trust. I exercise the right to amend my trust by amending section 5.4 of article 5 to read as follows: 8 shares to be divided into equal parts as follows:
item iv: 4 shares to Pacifica Foundation Radio of Berkeley, California, a charitable organization. If Pacifica Foundation Radio fails for any reason to take this gift, or if on the date of my death it is not an organization described in Internal Revenue Code 2055(a), this gift shall lapse.
The second document is a copy of the check and deposit slip.
The cashier’s check is payable to Pacifica Foundation Radio. On the deposit slip, the name of the beneficiary is changed to “Pacifica Foundation Radio DBA as KPFA” to enable deposit into KPFA’s Mechanics Bank account.
The third document is KPFA general manager Quincy McCoy signing the estate document.
McCoy signs as a fiduciary agent for Pacifica Foundation Radio instead of Pacifica‘s chief financial officer who is the fiduciary for Pacifica Foundation Radio per the organization’s bylaws. “The Chief Financial Officer shall cause to be deposited all moneys and other valuables in the name and to the credit of the Foundation with such depositaries as may be designated by the Board”.
The fourth document is the donor’s giving history.
The records in the Memsys database indicate small annual gifts never exceeding about $300 annually to the local station’s fund drives. Interestingly, larger gifts occurred in December of 2010 and March of 2011 in a period of time when Wilkinson and Dan Siegel were encouraging KPFA donors to pledge instead to their Save KPFA advocacy group. The donor’s single largest donation of $300 was in December 2010, one month after budget cuts caused layoffs and the end of the station’s 2-hour Morning Show when Wilkinson’s Save KPFA faction was at loggerheads with the station.
The fifth document is an assortment of emails between KPFA GM Quincy McCoy, KPFA business manager Maria Negret, IED Wilkinson, PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert and CFO Salvador.
In the first email dated March 4th, 2015, McCoy complains that news of the arrival of the bequest check had “leaked”. McCoy complains that KPFA’s union would ask for employee health benefits that had been reduced to due to lower listener support to be restored, that Flashpoints-staffers who had received targeted schedule reductions (the only program to suffer staffing reductions in 2015) would ask for the hours back, and that the “silly CAB” would livestream “something”. McCoy adds he had submitted plans two weeks ago for $250,000 in expense cuts because making April’s KPFA payroll looked dicey.
In the second email also dated March 4, 2015, CFO Salvador states that he has “concerns”, namely that “this is a substantial amount and paperwork was submitted on behalf of Pacifica Foundation without consulting the national office or at the very least advising us at the national office that this was forthcoming. We only learned about this from our recent conversation with Democracy Now. They were probably wondering why Pacifica officers and top-level management were not aware of this substantial amount”. … There may be questions brought up that we at the national office must be prepared to address. Transparency has been the outcry and the demand of the PNB and other Pacifica supporters”
Pacifica in Exile notes that despite the “confidential” markers on the emails, the contents released do not contain any information that can be designated as confidential.
On Thursday, Dan Siegel’s former employee of 12 years national board member Jose Luis Fuentes, attempted to push the Pacifica Foundation into filing for voluntary bankruptcy and begin selling off buildings and selling or swapping broadcast licenses.
Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board at pnb@pacifica.org.
For readers who may wish to do more, any donor to a California-based not for profit organization like Pacifica may file a complaint to the open file at the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the Office of the CA Attorney General. Pacifica‘s case number is CT011303. The form and instructions for filing may be downloaded here.
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Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica‘s storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases including the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI. Pacifica Foundation Radio operates noncommercial radio stations in New York, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and syndicates content to over 180 affiliates. It invented listener-supported radio.