Berkeley –  Los Angeles station KPFK recently lost a large multi-grievance union arbitration with the station’s SAG-AFTRA bargaining unit after new manager Leslie Radford imposed unilateral work hour reductions, fired two employees and denied severance benefits. The settlement amount is at least $200,000 and will include back pay to approximately 20 employees whose hours were cut, the re-hire of two fired employees and the payment of at least four previously denied severance packages.

The preliminary decision and award from arbitrator Louis S. Zigman, Esq. was issued on May 31, 2016, after two arbitration hearings were held on January 21, 2016 and March 22, 2016. This is what it says. 

 “On December 30, 2015… {KPFK General Manager} Radford made references to potential bankruptcy filings and {changes in} asset ownership, as well as solvency concerns”. 

“On January 7, 2016, based on those statements, the Union asked for information about asset ownership, finances, and board discussion minutes”. 

“At the first day of the arbitration hearing on January 21, 2016, the {arbitrator} ordered the Company to provide the information”. 

“The Company {represented by Dan Siegel} complied. However, as of the date of the second hearing {March 22, 2016} the Company had still not provided a financial ledger”. 

“The Company’s explanation was that its finances and information was essentially in disarray”.              p.8

“The Union pointed out that despite repeated requests, the Company simply never provided the financials, even to the date of the hearing.”      p.10

“I also noted that the crux of information was never actually given”.        p.16

The statements contained in the May 31 2016 Preliminary Arbitration Decision and Award, which was not released to Pacifica’s board of directors until September, three months after it was issued, clarify Pacifica and KPFK’s current management (IED Brazon and GM Radford) did not release a financial ledger in March of 2016 after being directly ordered to do so in January of 2016 at the first arbitration hearing. Unofficial corporate counsel Dan Siegel represented the company {Pacifica} at both arbitration hearings in January and March of 2016. Assertions made by KPFK general manager Radford and IED Brazon that previous ED John Proffitt  incurred the arbitration loss were incorrect.

Radford made the following statement to the KPFK local station board on September 18, 2016.  “I am reducing {payments to the national office)  because the arbitration failure in the amount of some $200,000 falls squarely on the ED at the time in July and August of 2015, who did not provide the financials to the union. I don’t see why this station should eat it … given that the ED last summer, who is not the ED now, failed to provide the company books to the union per the union’s request”.

As the decision states, the arbitration loss falls squarely on the current executive director of Pacifica.

Meanwhile Brazon attended to her priorities by spending $1,600 to have the building that holds KPFK-FM and the Pacifica Archives at 3729 Cahuenga Boulevard in Studio City, CA appraised for sale value. The signed appraisal request can be seen here.

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. Sign the petition to tell the PNB it’s time to let Lydia Brazon go as iED.

Pacifica’s board elections have come to an end, but it remains an open question exactly who voted and whether rampant fraud will render election results meaningless. Election supervisor Lynne Serpe, a seemingly reputable election administrator and election vendor True Ballot, who claim on their website to offer “the highest level of security, transparency and auditability available in the industry”, are allowing some pretty fishy stuff to go on – impacting at least 5% of the total vote count at at least one station.

Statements by election administrator Serpe on the elections.pacifica.org website indicate large numbers of new voters with fake postal addresses were allowed to vote in KPFK’s election. The two cases documented by Serpe cover 119 voters or approximately 5% of the total number of voters in the Southern California station’s election.

Serpe states: “…a string of pledges were made at the KPFK website and paid through PayPal that were all attributed to different individuals at the same address 828 West Washington Boulevard, L.A. 90015, which is the office of SEIU Local 1877. There were 71 such identical pledges at $25 apiece, all with the same postal address but different email addresses, for a total of $1775.”

In a second incident Serpe states “”These 41 folks are from a group of pledges entered by Adam Rice on 6/30/16, for which he turned in $1000 in cash. There is a list of the IDs of the pledges Rice entered. They were all entered with the same address and all with the same phone number, but the corresponding emails are unique to each name.”

The complaint filed goes on “the paper ballots were received by the church. The staff person informed us that the people whose names are on the ballots are not members or staff of the church, nor are they known by her or others in the church who she queried.  She also asked if the address of the church could be purged as being associated with these people, so that the church receives no more mail from KPFK. These people could still vote online, if email addresses were input into the system, making the unopened ballots unneeded”.

Serpe and True Ballot are declining to disqualify fraudulent ballots. This does not seem to be consistent with any set of professional standards for election administration.

There has still been no audio  posted from the October 6 national board meeting which was not accessible to the public as required by Corporation for Public Broadcasting open meeting requirements. Pacifica in Exile was able to obtain a recording of the meeting and it is publicly posted here. No recording is posted on Pacifica’s meeting record website.

If you don’t want to listen to the entire three hours, this 10-minute clip contains the board vote to commit  an open meetings violation and deliberately place Pacifica into CPB probation for a period that could be as long as another year, even if severely late financial audits should ever get caught up. As a listener member observed, with 8 board members voting not to stream the meeting and reject the $750,000 annual grant, the invoice to each member that voted not to stream would be $93,750. The 8 members who voted not to stream the meeting were Adriana Casenave KPFT, Wesley Bethune KPFT, Cerene Roberts WBAI, Janet Kobren KPFA, Ron Pinchback WPFW, Jim Brown WPFW, Nancy Sorden WPFW and Temba Tshibanda (formerly Jevon Gammon) Uhuru Radio.

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.

For a satirical look at Pacifica’s troubles from the inside and some biting general political commentary, KPFA’s Twit Wit Radio, produced by noted theatrical producer George Coates, is unmatched. Pacifica’s board elections is the topic of both the August 21st and August 28th episodes.

Twit Wit Radio: August 21, 2016

Twit Wit Radio: August 28, 2016

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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.