Originally posted March 26, 2014
Berkeley-The audit, an annual right of passage for most large nonprofits and a requirement for ongoing public broadcasting grant funding, has been delayed by Pacifica’s auditor due to the chaos created by the Board of Director’s power struggle with the Executive Director. Armanino Mckenna, one of the nation’s largest auditing firms, pushed back the start date on Pacifica’s audit, already somewhat late, from the planned start date of Thursday March 27th due to the inability or unwillingness of member station KPFA to provide print or electronic copies of their reconciled accounting records.
Here is the exchange:
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From:[mailto:[email protected]
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 8:23 AM
Subject: RE: Pacifica audit FY2013
Okay, since we are changing the timing of the fieldwork I had to find a new team. For planning purposes, if we receive all the schedules on the April 28th (Monday vs. 26th which is a Saturday), we would make selections and provide those on May 5th. We would give you 4 weeks to compile the supporting documents. This is due to the earliest we have a team available for the testing is June 2nd. Please do not hesitate to call if you have any questions.
–Thank you for allowing us to discuss with you regarding the scheduling of Fiscal Year 2013 audit this morning.As I said earlier, I am hoping that you could do a partial audit of the company since the stations, except for KPFA, have done their bank reconciliations and we can prepare the rest of the audit schedules before April 21st. But we understand that since KPFA is not done with their reconciliations, a partial audit cannot be done by your firm.
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The delay in the audit will affect the release of grant funds to all five radio stations licensed to Pacifica.
A link to the request for an investigation filed at the CA Attorney General by 8 former National Board members on March 23rd can be found here.
A sign-on letter objecting to the Board’s actions can be found here and is rapidly gathering signatures from across the country.
In Los Angeles, 13 paid staff members and programmers who host shows, have petitioned the National Board to hold an election to remove their staff delegate to the National Board, Rodrigo Argueta. The petition cites Argueta for “hasty reckless actions taken with no consultation with those he claims to represent” and references Argueta’s vote against a motion for independent legal and human resources advice to be made available to the Board of Directors.
The petition for relief by the LA employees and programmers can be found here. Pacifica’s bylaws provide for the right to to a voter referendum on board members on receipt of a petition by the class of members that elected the delegate.
Recent attempts by the ad-hoc board of director’s office now set up in the former program director’s office at KPFA, to strip the alarm codes from national division employees working at the occupied national office next door were reportedly accompanied by newly-created “Pacifica” letterhead, which since it did not closely resemble the organization’s actual letterhead, was recognized to be suspicious by the vendor.
The Board of Directors next meets on Thursday March 27th at 5:30pm Pacific. Nothing has been heard from Bernard Duncan who was named interim executive director by the Board of Directors at their March 20th meeting and then apparently replaced yet again on March 24th by disputed board chair Margy Wilkinson.
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