Originally posted November 15, 2014
Berkeley– More than a little late, and punctuated by an audible “oh shit” by unelected board chair and IED Margy Wilkinson, the Pacifica National Board voted by a narrow 1-vote margin to change the amount of shared service contributions. The new rule, which Wilkinson and Salvador implemented weeks ago without board permission, sets network service payments by the average of the last four years of listener support rather than real-time accounting of actual contributions received this year. As a result of the new policy, stations that experience significant drops in contributions in 2015 may face increased levies at the same time they lose Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding. Fund drive tallies for the September/October fund drive cycle showed 4/5 stations experienced between 18% and 25% shortfalls from their original fund drive goals.
Wilkinson’s obscenity came when members of her own faction objected to the policy including KPFA’s Jose Luis Fuentes, WPFW’s Benito Diaz, KPFK’s Laurence Reyes, and KPFT’s Hank Lamb, who expressed strong indignation at the switch to the new policy prior to receiving permission from the board of directors. Several PDGG-affiliated directors could not attend the meeting, which Wilkinson arranges by calling meetings unilaterally instead of agreeing on a meeting schedule at the beginning of the year, as previous boards have done.
Pacifica’s audit committee voted to retain the services of auditor Armanino to audit the 2014 fiscal year. Pacifica’s full board has not yet ratified the recommendation. Armanino, whose tax returns for 2012 were millions of dollars out of whack with audit results presented weeks later, has not yet completed the 2013 audit. CFO Salvador has stated the 2014 audit is not likely to begin until May of 2015. IED Wilkinson and treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert have stated the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will require completed AFR’s (Audited Financial Reports) from Pacifica by March of 2015 in order to consider removing Pacifica from suspended status.
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.
11 months after abruptly firing the previous ED, the board of directors is finally getting around to attempting to hire another one. The recruitment process has been lukewarm at best. Only 25 applications were received (by contrast the 2013 process had 63 applications) and only 6 of the 25 applications were “complete” (i.e. contained all requested application materials). The board voted narrowly to distribute the application materials to all 22 board members via the insecure Google Drive. The rogue board seems determined to complete the hire prior to the expiration of their terms in January of 2015, but with no in-person meeting of the board scheduled, the new executive director would have to be hired without being interviewed in person. Board members may not extend their terms past January 31st without the permission of the full membership.
KPFT board member Hank Lamb, impatient with the endless election delays, tried to ram onto both the Texas local agenda and the national agenda, an instruction for Pacifica to immediately proceed with an election. He suggested that Pacifica dispense with national and local election supervisors and simply use online survey tool “Survey Monkey” to issue and tabulate ballots. Lamb did not succeed in his effort as the local station board in Texas canceled their meeting and he was not called on during agenda approval at the national board meeting before time ran out.
At KPFA’s local station board meeting, GM Quincy McCoy was corrected when he cited 5,000 new or returning members to KPFA as a result of the September/October fund drive. LSB treasurer Barbara Whipperman stated the correct number was approximately 1,020 and the 5,000 number was a mis-statement of about 500%.
During the general manager report, 2013 chair and Save KPFA-affiliated board member Burton White made an odd “personal expression” stating: “There are two kinds of financial pressure. One is when you boycott or strike to try to make the other party come to terms. The other is when you try to punish people for having legitimate disagreements. That reminds me of the Hollywood blacklist or the destruction of Paul Robeson as a human being. I plead with you not to get into the position of punishing people because we disagree with them”.
Pacifica in Exile asked White to clarify the meaning of his public statement. To date he has declined to do so.
At the national finance committee, the budgets for Washington station WPFW and Los Angeles station KPFK remained in significant disarray. The board of directors has not approved a single operating budget for any of the units 6 weeks into the new fiscal year. During the discussion of WPFW’s budget, interim GM Michelle Price admitted she had lowered the original fund drive goal from $388,000 to $288,000 and then stuffed a one-time bequest from a deceased member into the fund drive totals in order to present a fund drive total of $289,000. The actual fund drive results were $214,000 of the original $388,000 goal. In Los Angeles, a troubled budget draft is being “balanced” by the station removing its 12-month installment option for large pledges and replacing it with a 3-month installment option, in order to raise the fulfillment rate (the amount of pledged revenue that actually comes in) from the current 80% rate to a proposed 90% rate. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that accelerating the installment payment schedule was likely to lower the amount pledged as people who could have paid $10 or $20 a month would now have to pay $40 or $80 a month to pledge the same amount of money.
KPFT’s fifth consecutive authorization to run at half power expires on November 24th, 2014. No renewal request has yet been filed at the Federal Communications Commission requesting a sixth 6-month waiver. KPFT in Houston needs to replace its transmitter and antenna equipment in order to be able to operate at its licensed power level.
As an update to the ongoing battle about spanish-language programs, the task force that was supposed to be convened in February of 2014, and has not met was seemingly trapped in a disagreement about whether the scope of work only encompassed the spanish language or if it was to explore other foreign language/bilingual program options including languages like Cantonese or Tagalog.
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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.