Berkeley-PNB director Bill Crosier notified the local board in Houston that Pacifica’s directors and officers liability policy had been cancelled, with an extension for only 60 days, and a bankruptcy/insolvency exemption in effect for those 60 days. The last day the policy provided full coverage was August 11th. Insurance underwriters had been demanding audited financial statements for months. Crosier told his board (the only local one to date that has been informed):

“If you’ve been following the discussions we’ve had for the last few months about Pacifica finances, audits, and related matters, you’ll remember that we were repeatedly warned Pacifica’s Directors and Officers (D&O) liability insurance would be cancelled if we did not get  the way-past-due audits done by mid-August. Well, the time has past, the FY2014 audit is almost done, the FY2015 audit has not started, and our  D&O insurance was cancelled last week. Our CFO was able to get an extension for 60 days, but it has some significant restrictions on what  it will cover, especially if Pacifica goes into bankruptcy. It’s unlikely we can get any extension or a new policy after those 60 days if we can’t get our audits done and at least a plan for our financial recovery. In fact, our CFO told us that insurance underwriters are  unlikely to approve any policy for us if we cannot show them that we have some sort of plan to get our finances in order. One reason I’m telling you this is that you might be personally affected. Pacifica’s D&O insurance covers liability of delegates (all of you) as well as directors and officers and employees, so if we don’t have such insurance, you are not covered.”

Josh Sheppard, the chair of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress, who was working on a grant collaboration with former Archives Director Brian De Shazor, until DeShazor abruptly resigned in June, went public with his distress about the state of Pacifica’s archival audio collection. Sheppard posted a blog about the impending crisis stating “Just as these initiatives were set to begin, the Pacifica Executive Board of Directors unexpectedly implemented austerity measures on archive staff and maintenance, including massive pay cuts and the cancellation of these national collaborative projects, leading to the resignation of long-time Archive Director Brian DeShazor. That so much free expert labor would be turned away by a nonprofit institution without explanation has raised many red flags to our national consortium. Due to the Pacifica Board of Director’s decisions, the RPTF has been forced to change its internal recommendation from grant collaboration to advocacy that Pacifica is now an endangered collection. The current situation might simply be framed that fundamental components of the Pacifica Radio Network infrastructure are being dismantled without a strategic vision”. 

Ballots mailed for Pacifica’s 2016 board elections from the East Coast on August 15th and will be arriving over the next few days. Pacifica in Exile’s candidate endorsements for all stations can be found here.  You will find online voting instructions inside your printed ballot envelope.  The voting period ends on  September 30 at 11:59pm in your own time zone.  If you donated, but don’t receive a  ballot or for any ballot related question at any station, you can contact King Reilly, a KPFK member who has graciously agreed to assist folks, at kingreilly@roadrunner.com.

For more on our endorsed slates, see the Committee to Strengthen KPFK, Move KPFT Forward, United for Community Radio (KPFA), and WBAI Indy Caucus websites.

Pacifica’s finance committee met on August 16th and will not be meeting again until August 31st. At about a month before the end of the current fiscal year, the committee has still not approved a single one of Pacifica’s seven divisional budgets. Much of the meeting was taken up with a proposal by WBAI director Cerene Roberts to re-allocate sideband income, one of the direct sources of income for the national office which largely pays salaries with income from sideband sales and affiliate contracts. The proposal drew the disapproval of CFO Sam Agarwal. PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert.left his usual factional affiliation to join BAI treasurer R. Paul Martin and KPFK treasurer Fred Blair in voting down the re-allocation and some harsh words were exchanged.

Roberts and Casenave also bellowed at the affiliates meeting a week earlier, a meeting not attended by either of the affiliate station representatives on the board. The cause of acrimony this time was whether or not the meeting audio would be streamed. It was not, but you can listen to a sampling of the theatrics here.  Roberts and Casenave are both running for re-election to the board.

The effort to evaluate the job performance of CFO Sam Agarwal by the national board’s personnel committee under chair Adriana Casenave has drawn the disapproval of several finance and audit committee members. Specific concerns included why an annual evaluation is being performed in August for an employee who began work in January of 2016, Casenave’s antipathy towards the CFO, and why completed evaluation forms are being emailed to Casenave’s personal hotmail address. Among other comments made about the process by Berkeley’s treasurer Barbara Whipperman: “I would not trust Adriana’s being in charge of anything to do with evaluating the CFO’s performance” and “I believe that her actions are a serious misuse of her position as chair of the Personnel Committee”  Whipperman is affiliated with Berkeley’s Save KPFA group which described Casenave as one of their “national majority coalition” in 2015. Pacifica in Exile refers to the same group as the Siegel/Brazon faction.

After spending much of the last national board meeting tabling a previous set of bylaws amendments and establishing a hurried schedule for the next set, the results as posted indicate the effort was a complete waste of time. Three bylaws amendments were proposed by the majority faction. One changes the notice time for future bylaws amendments by one day. One requests local boards to hold one annual fundraiser and one annual town hall meeting, instead of two town hall meetings each year. The final one proposes to have elections every 2 of 4 years instead of every 2 of 3 years and to lengthen delegate terms from 3 years to 4 years starting in 2019. The last is a farly bad idea without also reducing the size of the 24-person local boards, as they already run out of runners-up to take seats vacated during the three year terms, a problem that would worsen with longer four year terms. The latest set of proposed amendments marks the Siegel/Brazon faction’s sixth bylaws amendment cycle in three years. None have produced a single meaningful reform to the bylaws.

In Berkeley, the local board heard a long complaint by GM Quincy McCoy that audit failures by Wilkinson and Brazon have left Pacifica a “tainted nonprofit” and that he is unble to access grant funds to address KPFA’s precarious finances. The board passed motions to warn Brazon, the ED the Siegel/Brazon faction put into place, to keep her hands out of KPFA’s bank account, to recommend the network sell or swap WBAI and give away the archives, and finally to recommend the national board seat the 4 WBAI directors who have been excluded since January. A summary tape is available here. 

McCoy also reported long-rumored union negotiations with KPFA’s CWA bargaining unit were postponed again until after Labor Day. KPFA is reported to be negotiating to reduce payroll costs by $200,000 for 2017. Several board candidates with the Save KPFA slate have tight ties to the CWA as former employees, including KPFA’s own bargaining rep for over a decade, Christina Huggins and former Weinberg, Rogers and Rosenfeld attorney Yuri Gottesman. This might get a littlle sticky if concessions are sought from the CWA bargaining unit again for 2018. Unofficial corporate counsel Dan Siegel and Margy Wilkinson-appointed general manager Leslie Radford at KPFK just took a big loss in arbitration after similar negotiations to reduce personnel costs went badly. In arbitration, it was found they had not consulted adequately, fired staff contrary to the bargaining agreement and illegallly withheld severance pay.

Since Lydia Brazon has been interim Executive Director (iED) of Pacifica, the financial, legal, and organizational problems have continued to multiply, and member numbers continue to dwindle. Plans for reversing the acute downward slide are nowhere to be found. Please sign the petition to tell the PNB it’s time to let Lydia Brazon go as volunteer iED.

If you would like to support either or both of the legal complaints filed by Pacifica members, you can visit the Clean Up Pacifica Project for more information. An amended complaint was filed in Yeakey vs Pacifica and can be read here. 

A timeline of the now two year old coup by the Siegel/Brazon faction can be seen here.

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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. An email template can be found 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.