Originally posted July 6, 2014

Berkeley-The purges continue at Pacifica Radio. The latest victim is KPFK/KPFA interim general manager Richard Pirodsky, a 30-year radio operations veteran who was summarily removed from his position by the departing interim executive director Bernard Duncan, who executed Pirodsky’s termination in his last three minutes on the job. In the last week, the organization has seen the departures of the payroll and benefits manager, the administrative manager, the KPFK manager and the ED, with three of the four positions lacking a successor. This chaos creates a huge vacuum in an organization whose New York station is in crisis, whose public funding has been cut off, and which has not produced financial statements in months.

Duncan appointed office manager Zuberi Fields as the new interim at LA’s KPFK, the networks most financially successful station, which raised $825,000 in the last fund drive cycle. Fields, whose duties at KPFK largely cover facilities maintenance and supplies, was previously a board operator for an LA-based Clearchannel station. before joining KPFK in 2005. Fields was the recipient of a number of off-color and sexist Facebook messages and pictures by the former program director at WBAI, Tony Bates, who left WBAI under a cloud of threatened sexual harassment charges in 2011.

Pirodsky, who executed the much-objected-to delivery of LA syndicated programming to KPFA’s morning, displacing local programming from Project Censored, the Richmond Progressive Alliance’s Andres Soto, Labor Fest organizer Steve Zeltzer, Davey D and others, in May, after deferring from doing so for months, was generally acknowledged as the most experienced radio station manager in the network, and had recently applied to take over as the interim executive director after Bernard Duncan left for New Zealand after only 10 weeks on the job. Instead, Duncan fired him three minutes before leaving Pacifica. Pirodsky’s departure may be linked to unconfirmed reports that former administrative director Tamika Miller had been collecting double paychecks starting after executive director Reese was abruptly fired in March of 2014. It’s not clear if the reports are accurate as fired-rehired CFO Salvador had been making accusations against Miller and the most of the national office accounting staff since workplace complaints about creating a hostile work environment were filed against him in October of 2013 by five different employees.  Pirodsky had been handling management duties at both KPFK and KPFA for months, spending one week in Northern California and one week in Southern California since January, limiting his ability to exercise complete supervisorial authority at both stations.

Reese discusses the financial problems at Pacifica she was trying to address during her tenure as ED here. 

The board majority has failed to fill the executive director position, leaving it vacant until at least July 10th, when their next meeting is scheduled. As of June 30th, the last time the board met, only one resume had been submitted. Pirodsky’s. Two other names were floated without resumes: former KPFA interim manager Jim Bennett, and attorney Sherry Gendelman. Gendelman, a traffic attorney cited with misconduct by the Northern California Bar Association,  was the board chair and interim executive director in 2008, where she pushed for Pacifica to take out a large ballon loan, with KPFK’s Hollywood studio facility as collateral. The loan, which was narrowly defeated by one vote on the Pacifica board, would have come due with a $2 million dollar payment in 2013, and probably would have caused the loss of KPFK’s building last year.

The new executive director will be the 4th in the last 4 months.

The network’s elections for new board members were scheduled to begin in June, but the board majority after objecting strongly to the postponement of the 2013 elections to 2014 based on the layoffs of  2/3 of the workers at New York’s WBAI in July of 2013, has taken no action to proceed with the election scheduled for 2014.

Members objecting to the board majority’s chaotic actions over the past six months, which will lead to the network’s dissolution, can sign a petition here.