Originally posted May 18, 2014
Berkeley-As the first week after the TRO ruling passes, the extent of the shaky foundation of the 2014 rogue board continues to emerge. The lack of eligibility of not one, but two of the twelve directors claiming to constitute the majority of the board is unquestionable. Boards of directors of CA nonprofit organizations have only the powers and authorities vested in them by the organization’s bylaws, and in this case, that’s not looking like anything at all.
WPFW listener representative Tony Norman, who is currently claiming to be vice-chair of the board, certified to Pacifica that he did not hold a public office when elected to the local board in DC. That was false. Norman’s position as an elected neighborhood commissioner is described by the DC Board of Elections as an elected public office and by the District of Columbia Office of the Corporate Counsel as an elected official of the District of Columbia government.
Pacifica’s bylaws state that “no person who holds any elected or appointed public office at any level of government, federal, state, or local, or is a candidate for such office shall be eligible for election.”
KPFT listener representative Hank Lamb is a member of the KPFT unpaid staff and would not have been eligible to join the local or national boards as a listener delegate. Lamb’s KPFT station email contact form can be seen here.
The Pacifica bylaws between classes of members and do not permit station staff members, paid or unpaid, to fill listener representative positions. “Any Listener-Sponsor Member in good standing, except radio station management personnel or Foundation management personnel or staff members, may be nominated for the position of Listener-Sponsor Delegate for the Foundation radio station with which s/he is affiliated.”
So what to make of these endemic bylaws violations? While they certainly indicate sloppiness in carrying out Pacifica’s elections over the last few years, the more important index is that, without the invocation of an “emergency,” ongoing lack of compliance with bylaws introduces real questions about board authority. Seating ineligible directors does not constitute an emergency.
A FAQ about the events of the last 90 days can be found here.
Director Lamb, who has made previous appearances in Pacifica In Exile for his rant on the gun rights of patriots and threatening emails to network staffers, also presents the problem of multiple felony convictions. The Communications Act of 1934 allows the Federal Communications Communication (FCC) to order a party applying for a broadcast relicensure with felony convictions to show cause for why they should be granted a broadcast license.
With two of Pacifica’s stations in the relicensure process right now (WBAI-FM and KPFT-FM), Lambs failure to disclose his long rap sheet on his candidate statement introduces an element of risk that Pacifica’s board should have (and did not) consider with advice of counsel, before risking both station’s licenses.
In a horrifying social media comment, KPFA local station board member Mark Hernandez (and Save KPFA member) proposed biometric surveillance at the front door of the community radio station in Berkeley before dismissing the idea as “too expensive”. Biometric surveillance, which is often referred to as “face-recognition software” is one of the Orwellian devices recently floated for Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center (DAC) before the Oakland City Council rolled back the proposal due to a huge community uproar.
KPFA LSB member (and United for Community Radio member) Samsarah Morgan wrote this piece in April about her experiences on KPFA’s local station board.
The last edition discussed Dan Siegel’s unethical investigation of sexual and racial harassment charges he knew in advance to be false at Pacifica. This pattern of facilitating false charges has come up before in Siegel and Yee’s legal dossier when a 2010 ruling in Moreno vs. Ostly resulted in a sexual harassment claim rebounding against Siegel and Yee’s client with a $1 million dollar award for defamation. The prevailing side mentioned that “the system is not to be used to bring claims that are not legitimate because you have some sort of personal vendetta.” Siegel and Yee were sanctioned for “misuse of the discovery process” and engaging in a “charade.”
Siegel and Yee were sanctioned for ‘misuse of the discovery process’ and engaging in a ‘charade.’
Siegel testified in 2011, as a sitting board member at KPFA, on behalf of former CFO Lonnie Hicks, that Hick’s firing was caused by racism. Hicks won a $440,000 settlement and Pacifica shortly afterwards lost its directors and officers insurance policy and was only able to secure coverage at 3x the price, greatly exacerbating the financial stress at the network. Siegel’s deposition (in a long and short version) can be found here.
Multiple board members have reported over the years that Hick’s financial statements were chronically confusing and they believed him to be concealing information. The controller Hicks hired and worked with for many years was later found to have been convicted of embezzling $90,000 from a previous employer and was let go by Reese in 2012 after charging personal items on the non-profit’s credit card.
The court decision, if upheld on June 3rd, may also clear the way for “organizational darwinism” (as the decision to partition the network was described by attorney Dan Siegel) to prevail as the California stations may be poised to throw the weaker East Coast and Texas stations overboard by either withholding financial support or selling off the weaker units to endow the stronger ones, as some board members have publicly recommended.
KPFA’s Community Advisory Board announced a town hall meeting
June 21 at EastSide Arts Alliance at 2277 International Boulevard in Fruitvale
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