Originally posted August 30, 2014

Berkeley-When local activists blocked the Zim Piraeus from unloading the majority of their freight at the Port of Oakland to protest Israeli massacres in Gaza City, KPFA board operator, apprenticeship program coordinator and LSB staff rep Frank Sterling wanted Pacifica’s Berkeley station KPFA to be there chronicling the port blockade in real time. Sterling’s proposal to produce the coverage, which finally aired the morning before the 4-day community/labor blockade began, underwent a difficult internal battle at the station, that included a rantby Save KPFA-affiliated local board member Jack Kurzweil that the proposal to cover the demo was “wrongheaded” and an initial veto by management. Sterling went public with his distress in a heartfelt email where he said KPFA was breaking his heart, and after emails from the community flooded the station, the decision was reversed. Save KPFA-affiliated local board member Mark Hernandez expressed anger at Sterling for his efforts describing the appeal to the community as “not a good career move” in a Facebook discussion group. Sterling is paid for four hours a week of operational work.

The local station board in Berkeley also voted down a resolution offered by Berkeley Copwatch co-founder and  2013 James Madison Freedom of Information award winner Andrea Prichett to discourage using the Berkeley Police Department to referee internal disagreements at the station. Prichett’s motion was intended to address both the 2008 police beating of unpaid staffer Nadra Foster in 2008 in the station’s lobby and a 2013 dispute with former Morning Mix host JR Valrey. Staff rep Brian Edwards-Tiekert and unelected board chair/IED Margy Wilkinson both spoke against the motion, Wilkinson stating that life was “complicated”. Edwards-Tiekert said that while he understood fear of the police from his upbringing in Mamaronek, NY, he was not comfortable with anything saying police should not invited into the Berkeley station. Edwards-Tiekert also accused Copwatch co-founder Prichett of having dinner with the Berkeley Chief of Police during the heated conversation, which predated the police brutality firestorm which swept the country after Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, MO.

At Tuesday’s finance committee meeting, Texas station KPFT became the first station to attempt to balance its budget by defunding the 501c3’s headquarters. KPFT said they couldn’t achieve a balanced budget without lowering their contribution to network services, and were unable to project any increase in their listener support numbers for 2015. The station posted a preliminary operating deficit of (-$103,000) in the year ending 9-30-2013 and is on a 5th consecutive temporary authorization to operate at low power because its transmitter equipment is failing.

Members objecting to the board majority’s actions over the past six months can sign a petition here.

Fired/rehired CFO Raul Salvador spoke of lowering expenses at national headquarters, but the numbers cited didn’t square with financial statements provided to the board of directors. Although both he and IED Wilkinson talk frequently of lowering expenses, statements reveal increased expenses by the national office unit since Wilkinson orchestrated the firing of the previous ED and inserted herself into the position in March. National office divisional expenses averaged $112,000 a month from October 2013 to February 2014 and rose to $165,000 a month from March 2014 to June 2014, National office payroll/benefits expense averaged $57,000 monthly from October 2013 to February 2014 and rose to $76,000 monthly from March 2014 to June 2014. The June 2014 figure for national office payroll/benefits was $76,744.

Salvador thought he could reduce the annual network services amount needed from the five stations to $1.3 million a year. Unfortunately, the actual amount paid in by the 5 stations in the year ending 9-30-2013 was only $1.1 million dollars. Since the network’s payroll for 250 employees, 2/3 of the health benefits and all regulatory and tax compliance is administered by the national office, a budgeting scheme to reduce that amount by hundreds of thousands of dollars is likely to lead to structural breakdown.

During an audit committee meeting earlier this week, it was reported the audit of the last fiscal year remained unscheduled despite earlier announcements that it would begin, sequentially, at the end of June, the end of July, and the end of August. Pacifica is not CPB-qualified for the upcoming year due to failure to complete the audit (which former ED Reese had scheduled to begin on March 24th) and to submit annual financial reports by the June 30th deadline.

Pacifica’s rogue board has done nothing to schedule the postponed election, rejecting all 3 candidates for the election supervisor position, including former PNB vice chair and elections committee chair Bill Crosier, who submitted detailed plans for how to proceed with a low-cost election. Pacifica’s last election committee meeting failed to make quorum because local and national board members failed to show up. The nonprofit risks a legal action by members to force the elections required by the bylaws.

With no start date scheduled for the audit of the last fiscal year, Pacifica has fallen out of compliance with the Nonprofit Integrity Act (SB1262) which requires any charity with gross revenues of $2 million dollars or more to have available for inspection by the Attorney General and the public, audited financial statements no later than nine months after the close of the fiscal year. A pending complaint to the CA Attorney General Registry of Charitable Trusts by 8 former board members can be found here (in a slightly updated version). The AG is responsible for California charitable compliance. Pacifica members can send a note to the AG here. 

Mario Murillo, a public affairs director at WBAI under former manager Samori Marksman, has come on board as an interim program director at the New York station, which has been the source of the largest operating deficits in Pacifica for a decade due to high fixed costs at their former Wall Street studios and an expensive antenna perched on top of the Empire State Building. Murillo’s introductory statement can be found here. He will be WBAI’s 3rd interim program director in the last 14 months. Murillo, who left the public affairs director position in 1998 as the wars with Mary Frances Berry were peaking, has historically been associated with the Justice and Unity Caucus, whose ascendency led to a high level of racial tension at the station in the mid-2000’s. 

Four of the five Pacifica stations are now using corporate call centers to process pledges during on-air fund drives, dispensing with 65 years of community volunteers answering the phone during fund drives. While NY station WBAI has not yet built out a fund drive area in the Brooklyn building they moved into in 2013, the other stations are making the change on a voluntary basis. After several station managers reported they had no idea how much the costs were for the call center services, PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert finally revealed Comnet LLC, the call center used by the two California stations, was charging .90/minute to process pledges. It’s not clear how the network will absorb hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional fundraising expenses.

The political home of many of the Berkeley-based members of the Siegel/Brazon faction, the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, (coordinating committee members include former KPFA local board members Pamela Drake and Matthew Hallinan and current board members Jack Kurzweil and Mal Burnstein) has been riven by accusations about improper use of the membership list, abuse of proxy votes and unauthorized postings to the club website and list-serv regarding their Oakland mayoral endorsement, complaints that will be familiar to Pacifica members. The club ended up endorsing incumbent mayor Jean Quan in the Oakland race, former client of the board majority’s attorney, Dan Siegel, who is now running against her.

Berkeley-based satirical sound collage Twit-Wit Radio, a 3-minute collaborative spoken word collage produced by noted theatrical director George Coates, continued to spoof the board-induced craziness on July 27th, with snippets of audio drawn from Pacifica’s actual board meetings.

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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.