Originally posted November 2, 2014
Berkeley– It’s a Pacifica election for Halloween. Maybe. The national board after considering a timeline developed by their elections committee, rejected the timeline, but did issue an order to unelected chair of the board/interim executive director Margy Wilkinson to hire someone to run the election by December 1st. This is not the first time the board has so instructed, but since Wilkinson voted to tell herself to make the hire, perhaps she will. Who will be hired is a mystery since the most qualified candidates Bill Crosier and Sanchez Montebello have both been ruled out, Crosier due to factional antipathy and Montebello withdrawing in anger after Wilkinson never acknowledged receiving his application. The election has many unanswered questions including how Pacifica will transition to online voting, where the money will come from to pay for it, and what seats are up for election – as 1/2 of the delegates terms expired in December of 2013 (including Wilkinson’s term) and the other 1/2 expire in December of 2015. The rejected timeline proposed a completed election by July of 2015. If the election covers all the seats, Pacifica subscribers will have to rank 18 candidates out of the 36-50 that will run in each signal area. Pacifica’s bylaws prevent delegates and directors from extending their own terms without the permission of the full membership.
A directors inspection last month delivered Pacifica’s bank statements from 2012-2014. The bank statements revealed a startling level of financial breakdown in the last six months. The monthly bank fees on Pacifica’s operating account have more than doubled since February of 2014, with charges assessed of $5,929 in August, $5,364 in July, and $5,936 in June. The increased charges are probably caused by the network’s transition from writing business checks to conducting virtually all business by wire transfer. As an example, the national office wrote only 3 checks in June of 2014 from its operating account while engaging in 70 incoming and outgoing wire transfers during the month. By contrast, in January of 2013 the foundation issued 50 checks from its national operating account and paid a $450 monthly bank fee.
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.
Wilkinson and CFO Salvador both gave reports to the board at the national board meeting on October 30th. Wilkinson responded to board member critiques of the use of corporate call centers and program decisions in NY and LA by saying “it’s not her job” and stated “the audit of FY 2013 is done”. Salvador the CFO, who spoke afterwards, contradicted her statement that the audit was done, stating the auditors had been sent away from the national office because not all of the audit schedules were completed, and would do fieldwork until returning on or about November 10th to the national office. In response to board complaints about the stalled budgetary process, Salvador said “we can’t do budgets for the stations”. Salvador also reported that Pacifica came very close to losing a United Health Care medical benefits program that covers KPFT in Texas, WPFW in DC, WBAI in New York and the national office and archives, only two months after the benefits were cancelled for 3 days in August. KPFT in Texas appears to have loaned the money to keep the medical benefits from being cancelled again.
Pacifica’s finance committee meetings are growingly increasingly contentious, reflecting the stalled budgetary process. Texas treasurer Jim Boyd scolded the committee on October 23rd saying “WBAI is a financial problem and that is what our job is. We’re not doing our job”. National board member Lydia Brazon said at the same meeting: “I’m not impressed with any of the budgets. I think we have too much wishful thinking in them”. Brazon didn’t seem to understand the finance committee can modify the divisional budgets if they believe they are wishful thinking. That’s the purpose of the budgetary review process.
Pacifica’s audit committee, after spending an hour talking about a third attempt to elect a chair for the committee, agreed to recommend to the national board the retention for a 3rd consecutive year of the Armanino firm to audit (or try to audit) Pacifica’s books. The audit committee suggests the audit of the 2014 year begin in May of 2015, a date which is 90 days after the IRS-recommended deadline of 5 months after the end of the fiscal year – and plans for the network to again miss the June 30th deadline for Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding – given the 8 week lead time for audit completion. The decision to forfeit 2015 CPB funding, assuming the organization would re-qualify, will cause ongoing financial stress. The audit committee also noted auditor Armanino is in need of the 2013 minutes for the audit committee. Unelected chair Margy Wilkinson was reported to have sent out a request trying to obtain those minutes. The committee later noted the 2013 audit committee secretary was Wilkinson herself.
Truthout magazine, among other media outlets including Pacifica’s own Democracy Now, have finally started to cover the Chevron media blitz of the Northern California town of Richmond, which featured the corporation inundating local voters to support its chosen City Council members and creating a “company newspaper” distributing corporate-approved “news” – the Richmond Standard. The coverage has not mentioned the role of KPFA in removing the only prime-time mass media focused on Richmond and Western Contra Costa, Andres Soto’s edition of the Morning Mix, where the Communities for a Better Environment organizer and 30-year Richmond resident had been giving Chevron a run for their money. The removal of the program in May and replacement with a syndicated program from LA eliminated the only year-round non-student coverage focused on the East Bay region which is assailed by Chevron’s refinery and an incoming crude by rail station at Kinder Morgan. The Richmond Progressive Alliance, which is in a pitched battle with the Chevron-backed candidate slate, objected to the program change in June, along with a plethora of community groups including the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, the Gray Panthers, Veterans for Peace, The San Francisco Green Party, ILWU Local 10, and the SF chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild.
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 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 apparently planning to continue to use Comnet, although many in the signal area are bitterly opposed to continuing to use the service. 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”.
The new general manager also 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”. Movement Generation was the event co-sponsor. 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 entire letter can be found here.
The Siegel/Brazon faction continues a series of witch hunts to try to prop up its shrinking majority by kicking opponents off the board. The pending trial of Kim Kaufman was postponed to November, eating up two board meetings with the kangaroo court. Kaufman could not even get a straight answer about what the charges were against her until six days before the first trial. Meanwhile, the national board ate up an hour of its own meeting time seeking to boot WPFW listener representative Luzette King off the board . (The Siegel/Brazon faction did the same to King back in 2008, when she last served on the national board). The board forgot they tabled King’s request for an excused absence due to illness on September 4th while they proposed kicking her off the board for three consecutive unexcused absences. King has been sharply critical of the board majority in 2014.
KPFA listeners recently complained that Pacifica’s website kpfa.org is rejecting critical comments about news coverage as “spam”. The complaints have occurred on several occasions over the past few months. Station management has not responded to complaints about the comment-blocking. Weirdly the system did allow a somewhat inarticulate comment on the newscast in question (October 30th) making fun of former President George Bush, but dismissed as spam a considerably more articulate comment from former LSB member and former Chron reporter Henry Norr regarding coverage of the Israeli closure of holy sites in Jerusalem.
Pacifica In Exile has been monitoring the conversation at the Wellstone Democratic Club, the political home of the Siegel/Brazon majority faction in the Bay Area. The club has been riven with conflict, much of it instigated by members of “Save KPFA”, who largely make up the Wellstone coordinating committee. LSB member Jack Kurzweil recently drew a sharp rebuke from Berkeley City Council member Jesse Arreguin after Kurzweil referred to Measure R, a local zoning initiative sponsored by progressive council member Arreguin as “like the Trans-Pacific Partnership”. Kurzweil had earlier been accused of violating the club bylaws by blocking an endorsement vote on the measure.
###
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.