Originally posted July 2, 2014

Berkeley-The last two days of the tenure of Pacifica Radio’s 3rd executive director of the year are passing with no replacement named. Despite a 3-hour secret session on Monday night, the Pacifica board majority took no action to transition the organization’s leadership, which will be basically be defunct through the July 4th holiday. The board also took no action regarding the latest missed deadline to begin the 2012-13 financal audit, which passed on June 30th without comment. The radio network has now missed all deadlines to submit annual financial reports for 2014 Corporation for Public Broadcasting  (CPB) funding.

Confusion was expressed by officers of the 2014 board, which has had no financial reports in hand since February, 4 long months ago. Purported chair Wilkinson commented she was not sure the network had funds to pay an executive director, apparently not planning to allocate any of the $2.2 million dollars pledged in May, and defining the executive director position as the most extraneous of the 225+ employees on Pacifica’s 6.5 million dollar annual payroll.

In Tuesday’s night’s streamed governance committee call, vice chair Tony Norman, by contrast, engaged in a long rant about the national office “grabbing” money from WPFW’s accounts (the Pacifica DC station he represents), although admitting WPFW had paid zero dollars towards shared network expenses for the fiscal year ending 9-30-2013. Norman complained WPFW had not received CPB funding in 2013, apparently unaware shared payments support annual audit and accounting services needed to maintain CPB funding. WPFW’s accrued liability for the last year to national and the pacifica archives was reported as $222,000 in February.

The request to relocate WBAI’s (the New York Pacifica station) antenna from the Empire State Building to the Conde Nast Building at 4 Times Square that had been filed by Pacifica Radio can be found here. No other information has been released to the public nor to WBAI’s thousands of members. A petition to prevent the rumored break-up of the network can be found here. 

Adminstrative manager Tamika Miller is reported to have joined the exodus of accounting and administrative employees from Pacifica’s headquarters, departing for Southern California within a week. 60% of central accounting and adminstrative staff have departed in the last month since the former CFO returned to the workplace following his January termination, February reinstatement and the failure to resolve multiple workplace complaints. Pacifica seems to be recruiting for replacements among former employees let go for cause, including data breaches and moonlighting on company time for H&R Block. The new accounting personnel were formerly hired as friends of former controller Lynn Magno who was let go for placing personal charges on Pacifica credit cards and later found to have been convicted of embezzling $90,000 from a former employer. Much of the chaos in Pacifica’s books is blamed on Magno who seems to have been responsible for large quantities of tangled and incomprehensible journal entries. Former ED Reese ended Magno’s employment.

The bizarre legal filings by Oakland mayoral candidate Dan Siegel in Pacifica Reporters Against Censorship (Free Speech Radio News) vs. Pacifica and Jean Quan for Mayor campaign treasurer Alan Yee, (Siegel’s law partner) appear to be linked to a seemingly fraudulent letter of retainer. Sigel’s filing, claims Pacifica’s contract to distribute the Free Speech Radio News program was “unauthorized” This would come as news to the 180 affiliated Pacifica stations who accessed the program via Pacifica’s distribution system for a decade based on contractual agreements and fees paid to Pacifica for the service.

The letter of retainer can be found here. It is dated and signed by Siegel on April 14, 2014, although the Pacifica National Board did not meet until the evening of April 14th to discuss who to retain and issued a report out saying that no decision was made at the April 14th meeting.  Board member Hank Lamb, who was present on the call from which more than 40% of the currently serving directors were excluded, has stated publicly:

Siegel and Yee are not retained in the FSRN matter, as it has never come before the PNB and no individual or individuals have any right legal, bylaw or otherwise to offer them the work. I had better see an immediate retraction of whatever they have claimed and by the people responsible. All of them. This will end in court. The majority, at this point, got to be stopped. They are no longer a majority and not representative of Pacifica PNB in any way, as far as making decisions in huddles or outside PNB meetings and it had better stop. I am ready to pay any price to get things on the table, public and righted. 

The abrupt removal of community-based programming in the AM hours at Berkeley station KPFA continues to generate negative reactions throughout the Bay Area. The sole “achievement” of the 2014 board majority to date, the program change has drawn objections from a plethora of community groups including the SF Labor Council, Veterans for Peace, the San Francisco Harvey Milk Democratic Club, the San Francisco Green Party, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, ILWU Local 10,Local 214 of the Letter Carriers Union,  the San Francisco Gray Panthers, and author Michael Parenti.

A petition objecting to the change is located 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-sponsor radio.