Berkeley – Clean-up work continues as the recovery of the network from the 2014 Siegel/Brazon coup enters its 7th month.

Financial statements through June 30, 2017 are available here. For the first time in recent history, the Pacifica Foundation is listed as “Current” status (rather then Delinquent status) at the California Attorney General’s Registry of Charitable Trusts, after the fiscal year 2015 audit was completed prior to the deadline. The audit  report, which is also available on the www.pacifica.org website, can be downloaded here.

 

A review of the audit provides some new information not previously revealed.

• Accounts payable of record at the Y/E date of September 30, 2015 or 18 months after the coup, are listed at $3.3 million, inclusive of the debt to Democracy Now and exclusive of rent payable to Empire State Building ($1.3M) and accrued sick and vacation time for employees of $978K.
• Listener support took a deep dive from fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2015, dropping from $10.3M to $8.1M, with the difference made up for with estate bequests and contributions.
• On page 21 of the audit, the auditor noted a half million dollars in unpaid pension liabilities from the network’s defined benefit pension plan for fiscal years 2014 and 2015. Due to some confusion years ago, Pacifica added a 403(B) plan for employees but did not terminate the existing defined benefit pension plan that the 403(b) plan was supposed to replace. It has since been unable to get the employee unions at CWA and SAG-AFTRA to agree to only one employee retirement plan, some 20 years after the second retirement plan was added. The pension plan payments are due the year following, so the fiscal year 2014 pension contributions went into default in 2015 and the fiscal year 2015 pension constributions went into default in 2016. LA station KPFK owes $155K, Berkeley station KPFA $129K, Houston station KPFT $41K, New York station WBAI $64K, DC station WPFW $48K, the Pacifica Archives $37K and the Pacifica National Office $37K in back pensions for the two years.
• On page 24 of the audit, the auditors noted previous year adjustments of $772K made “by analyzing accounts payable and accrued expenses in the books and records of the Foundation’s affiliated divisions. Management discovered many liabilities which were no longer valid, either because the expenditure was made in a prior year without being removed from the liability ledger and/or because the estimated accrual for the future expense never materialized“.
• Also on p.24 the auditor noted “During June 2016, the Foundation received notice from the California Franchise Tax Board that California tax-exempt status had been revoked with an effective date of February 27, 2017“.  This notice does not appear to have been shared with the Pacifica National Board of 2016, whose officers (Chair Tony Norman, Vice-Chair Adriana Casenave, Secretary Janet Kobren and Treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert) did not notify the board of a tax-exemption problem in June of 2016 — no one did until December of 2016 when letters threatening the Foundation’s tax-exempt status were pulled down by listeners after being publicly posted by regulatory agencies.

In other news, LA station KPFK dodged a bullet after it found it that the station’s long-term free lease for its radio transmitters on Mount Wilson with the United States Forest Service lapsed in 2016 under former GM Leslie Radford and had not been renewed. Fortunately, the Forest Service did not lease the plot to another radio station, force KPFK to stop transmitting, remove its equipment or force it to rent space commercially on another tower. The lease renewal is now in process.

The back rent for the commercial space rental for NY station WBAI at the Empire State Building, whose high cost and vicious elevator clause has caused so much grief and now a lawsuit, will next be heard on October 4 when a NY judge should issue a ruling. There are two likely outcomes; either a summary judgment for millions of dollars which will result in asset forfeitures to pay the judgment or an order for court-supervised negotiations to try to arrive at an amicable agreement between the parties. A petition supporting the second outcome can be signed here and retweeted here.

The board squabble lawsuit of 2016 was heard on September 21. At the hearing, the Alameda Superior Court judge issued preliminary rulings against 2016 PNB vice-chair Adriana Casenave in her injunction request to prevent the 2017 board from removing Casenave for disrupting meetings, and against Efia Nwangaza in her request to be restored as an affiliate board representative based on an election that eliminated the votes of 3/4 WBAI directors. The final matter in the case, whether former KPFK delegate Sharon Brown’s position as an LA County Small Business Commissioner constitutes a political appointment per the bylaws prohibition and whether the KPFK LSB had the right to remove her, will be further briefed and carried over to an October 12 hearing.

The network’s annual budget cycle remains impaired. 9 days before the end of the fiscal year, not a single divisional budget has made it through the national finance committee, much less the national board. The only budgets submitted were the Archives division, which is likely to be approved shortly and KPFA, which submitted a budget proposal with an almost $100K planned deficit, which the finance committee will be unable to approve in its current state. The network needs to not only cover current operating expenses, but make inroads on paying back past debts. KPFA, in particular, needs to at least budget to cover outstanding pension obligations from 2014 and 2015 of $129K, which the local station board failed to do.

In other news around the network: Houston’s KPFT is recovering from its recent trauma after long time manager Duane Bradley left and temporary replacement Obidike Kamau lasted only a few months. The station is stabilizing under new temporary manager Larry Winters, a long time music programmer, and has had an uptick in contributions and positive feedback on significant program changes the station hopes will increase dwindling revenues. Catastrophic hurricane Harvey has placed the entire Houston metro area under stress, and much like Hurricane Sandy impacted WBAI back in 2012, some revenue reduction is probably inevitable in the face of the extensive disruption throughout the region.

The Pacifica Archives, which is turning around after a diastrous 2015/2016 that had many thinking the collection would simply collapse, is crafting a digitization agreement with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation which takes an interest in the preservation of audio history. The partnership will focus on the electronic preservation of the large amount of reel to reel tapes remaining that will eventually degrade, if not saved and cataloged. The interest of the Foundation in working with Pacifica to preserve its collection is great news. The Archives is also working to expand the use of its materials as course materials in university classrooms.

At Berkeley’s KPFA, syndicated pick-up Sonali Kolhatkar, whose LA-based Rising Up program was wedged into the 8 AM drive time with much hoopla in 2015, has lost the favor of the powers that be and been consigned to 5am to make space for the expansion of 2015-2016 PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert to a 2 hour slot in the mornings, a position he held back in 2010 before KPFA’s financial stability collapsed after two $600K deficits in a row in 2009-2010. Kolhatkar’s show had been popular in Berkeley, often booking high fundraising totals, and was the only drive time show at KPFA produced and hosted entirely by non-whites. The station is now left with only with an AM co-host and contributions in the afternoon from Hard Knock Radio and sometimes Flashpoints co-host Miguel Molina, with an AM lineup of Edwards-Tiekert, Amy Goodman and Mitch Jeserich. The station made the change abruptly before the current fund drive, with little consultation with staff, and wiped another slate of volunteer programmers off the grid, for the third time since May of 2015, when the station syndicated 8am, followed by the removal of Music of the World from weekdays at 11am, and now the 5am music programs, displacing a total of some 30 staffers in barely two years. So far the move is paying off financially, although the highest single hour of fundraising in the current drive belongs to long-time Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein who booked a rather astonishing $18.4K in a single hour on September 21. But the addition of another $100K in annual personnel expense, along with a $100K addition in 2016, means that numbers will need to stay high to avoid financial stress from a payroll that is now about $2 million dollars a year in Berkeley.

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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-sponsored radio.