Originally posted October 27, 2014
Berkeley-Pacifica’s finance committee bears the responsibility for reviewing and recommending divisional budgets for the 5 stations, national office and archives and consolidating those 7 documents into an organizational budget for the upcoming year. That task is supposed to be completed by September 30th. But a month after the end of the fiscal year, the end is nowhere in sight. Pacifica is careening into 2015 with no fiscal plan at all.
After spending a great deal of time rejiggering the formula for payments from the stations to the national office/archives for network services from 19.5% of current listener support totals to 17% of the average of the last four years – to little detectable effect – the finance committee reversed whatever savings were created by mandating “catch-up payments” for unpaid monies from 2014, in effect increasing the payments for the 5 stations.
Last Thursday’s national finance committee meeting turned out to be a comedy of errors. New York station WBAI has no draft budget. Members of the finance committee – instead of following the budgetary process approved by the PNB in 2011 which requires the committee to generate a divisional budget if the station and local board don’t – engaged in self-deprecation about their lack of financial skills. They passed a motion they would tell the PNB that WBAI has no budget. This means the nonprofit organization will have no organizational budget as the organizational budget consists of the aggregated totals of the 7 divisional budgets. Pacifica’s CFO, Raul Salvador, abstained on the motion, apparently feeling no obligation to produce an annual budget.
Salvador said at the previous finance committe meeting that “shutting down the unit” (WBAI) had “crossed his mind”. The meaning of the statement is unclear as an FCC licensee can do only three things; a) sell or transfer the station license b) sign an operating agreement with a lease operator or c) apply for a main studio waiver and pipe in programming remotely. Pacifica’s bylaws require permission from the members for the sale or transfer of any station licenses. The last time a station was shut down and remote programming piped in (KPFA/Berkeley in the summer of 1999), the ensuing conflagration resulted in the resignation of the entire Pacifica National Board.
Members objecting to the board majority’s actions over the past nine months can sign a petition here.
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.
Houston station KPFT reported that it would not be adding so-called *catch-up payments* for back network services to its budget. The station’s treasurer reported the station didn’t think it owed the money. Washington station WPFW postponed budget review to November 11th as its local station board forgot to review the station budget. WPFW’s budget was described as containing “major cuts”, which was surprising as WPFW had canceled the July/August summer fundraiser due to management’s decreee they had “lots of money in the bank”. KPFK’s manager showed up at the meeting to discuss the LA draft budget, but the committee decided to adjourn and sent him away.
KPFA’s budget was passed by the committee, after virtually no discussion. The draft budget projects daily fund drive totals of $31,626, although the station averaged only $27,048 in the just-completed fall fundraiser. If the discrepancy carries through for the balance of the year, the station will have a $297,000 shortfall. Combined with a projection that off-air donations to the station will double to $450,000 in 2015, the Berkeley station looks poised for a large 2015 operational deficit, only 4 years after pulling out of a 2-year loss of $1.2 million dollars in 2009-2010. Controversial 20% staffing cuts to the award-winning investigative news magazine Flashpoints remained in the budget despite a paper surplus of $77,000. (The cuts to Flashpoints total approximately $24,000). The fall fund drive results of approximately $670,000 (identical to the Fall 2013 drive) confirm the addition of the syndicated show Uprising from Los Angeles, which kiboshed local community programming in AM drive, added $0 to the total fund drive results.
The Tea-Party affiliated call center Comnet in use at both California Pacifica stations has been rolled back at KPFA in response to public uproar after owner Bruce Hough’s work as a right-wing campaign consultant was revealed. The decision from KPFA’s general manager came 30 hours after the last edition of Pacifica In Exile chronicled his activities in Southern Oregon. The information had been sent privately to Pacifica’s board of directors earlier, but there was no response from the board nor Pacifica management until the information became public. KPFK is expected to follow suit and return to “roll-over” service for future pledge drives. KPFA’s general manager was less than gracious about the decision at the local station board meeting, asking if he was expected to “turn off the transmitter because PG&E was a big corporation”.
At New York’s WBAI, the return of former program director Bernard White, who was let go in April of 2009 after a dramatic drop in WBAI’s subscribership, accusations of embezzling and a management style some described as autocratic and others as a reign of terror, is raising some hackles. White sued Pacifica for racial discrimination after his termination. His case was thrown out of court after costing WBAI a six figure legal bill. Former local station board member Stephen Brown wrote about the feelings many long-time WBAI subscribers are having about the return of White to the station’s air (slightly snipped for length).
One of the most troublesome aspects of Pacifica’s democratic governance system has been the local station boards, national board committees set up in each regional signal area to manage certain aspects locally (evaluating and creating hiring pools for station managers, approving budgets, and sending 4 of their members to the national board of directors). The large boards, whose elections have been expensive (from $120K to $250K depending on the year), have tended to fight a lot, move at a molasses-like speed, and recently have engaged in vicious trial proceedings to attempt to remove one or more members or target managers for termination. In Houston, the site of two unsuccessful trials in the last year alone, a mysterious item on the agenda strives to censure two members (Nancy Saibara-Natomi and Maria Elena Castellanos) for what appear to have been accusations the station’s general manager Duane Bradley was shredding financial documents. Because the local board in Houston does not record their meetings, Pacifica in Exile can’t provide snippets of the proceedings, but will note for the record the Houston local station board seems capable of distracting itself permanently from the sixth consecutive FCC waiver to operate at half power (which will be filed on November 14th) and the urgent need to replace the failing transmitter.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the pending trial of Kim Kaufman, a PNB member who served as the KPFK treasurer in 2012-2013 before moving on to the national board, was postponed, eating up two board meetings with the kangaroo court. Kaufman, who could not even get a straight answer about what the charges were until six days before the meeting, is apparently charged with participating in a lawsuit against Pacifica (which places her in the company of former ED’s and board members Grace Aaron, Sherry Gendelman and Dan Siegel as well as current board members Lydia Brazon, Benito Diaz and Rodrigo Argueta), not attending a board meeting (which places her in the company of all board members past and present), and disposing of resumes as instructed after the National Board shut down a hiring process for a program director in Los Angeles in 2013 after finding out one candidate was receiving regular reports from inside the hiring committee and confronting hiring committee members. The “trial” has been rescheduled for November.
At KPFA’s local station board meeting on October 18th, the new general manager gave a dismissive public response to the scathing letter sent to KPFA (copied to author Naomi Klein) from Movement Generation. KPFA’s manager failed to apologize, referred to the concerns raised in it as “ridiculous” and Movement Generation as “those people”, who were “demanding free tickets to the event”.
The letter alleged blatantly anti-immigrant and racist behavior from KPFA’s event staff in trying to prevent Spanish language interpretation at Klein’s September 29th speaker series benefit.
The letter, which is signed by Brooke Anderson and Mateo Nube, both prominent figures in the social justice movement (Nube was the NW Coordinator for the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute and Anderson is former deputy director of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy), stated they “were shocked to be told that we could not provide translation because it would be “annoying to English speakers” and “create a disturbance for attendees who had paid for tickets.” Despite repeatedly assuring the interpreter would not interrupt the program and that we would work on the placement of the interpreter so as not to impact the room acoustics or audio recording quality, X became quite belligerent with MG staff Mateo Nube and Brooke Anderson, and speaker Cynthia Muñoz Ramos, telling us that X wouldn’t make exceptions for people who needed “special treatment.” But let us be direct here: X’s attempt to prevent Spanish translation was deeply problematic and the comments justifying the position blatantly anti-immigrant and racist. The behavior reflects poorly on KPFA as a station and jeopardizes the relationships and reputation of KPFA radio in a social justice movement in which immigrant and non-English-speaking communities are at the forefront“. The entire letter can be found here.
“Ebola-Gate”, Pacifica’s lurch into third-party fundraising without FCC notification or approval, continued for the duration of the fund drive with programs airing on WPFW and WBAI without FCC notification, and frequently airing on KPFK more than the two times a day authorized. While Pacifica will probably escape without significant fines due to the retroactive intervention, the lack of knowledge by the management team and board of directors of FCC regulations continues to be alarming. Unelected board chair Margy Wilkinson, who continues to prevent the selection of a qualified interim executive director, is said to have stated she was unaware of the third party fundraising rules that apply to non-commercial broadcasters like Pacifica.
At Berkeley’s Wellstone Club, the political home of the “Save KPFA” faction, KPFA local station board members Jack Kurzweil and Mal Burnstein, when confronted with their role in removing Chevron critic Andres Soto from KPFA’s primetime lineup and helping to enable the Chevron media blitz of the East Bay town of Richmond, shouted they were being “slandered”, apparently suffering a large bout of amnesia about Save KPFA’s 4-year campaign to remove The Morning Mix from KPFA’s program schedule.
The Siegel/Brazon factional attorney Dan Siegel’s campaign for the mayor of Oakland position appears to be on fumes as Election Day nears. The campaign has both the lowest level of financial support from Oakland residents of any of the major seven candidates at 32% of contributions, and the highest rate of self-funding at 60.45%.
The PDGG vs. Pacifica lawsuit case management conference has been postponed to February 17, 2015.
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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.