Originally posted December 6, 2014

Berkeley-Pacifica unelected board chair Wilkinson did hire a national election supervisor on December 1st. She went all the way down memory lane and hired L. Joy Williams, the very first local election supervisor at WBAI back in 2003. The only problem being that in Ms. William’s first go-round at Pacifica, she required the appointment of a co-election supervisor and vacated the position in the middle of the vote count, leading to the appointment of Phil Botwinick as the supervisor so the election could be finished. Botwinick filed this election report at the completion of his term. In his report he states:

By the end of December I was willing to take on a more official role. I knew that a more official designation was necessary if I was to get the cooperation of the station in planning the on-air appearances and recording of carts. If I were to replace the current Supervisor all the problems and difficulties that existed would have been impossible to repair by this late date. Based on my own experiences I believed that had I taken on the role of Election Supervisor I would most likely have been seen as the source of the difficulties and the cause for dissatisfaction with the process. Considering the work to be done, it was my suggestion to leave the Election Supervisor in place and to divide the duties between us. At this time I was elevated to the position of co-Election Supervisor”.

It appears in Wilkinson’s eagerness to avoid hiring candidates for the national election supervisor position “not in her faction”,  she selected a candidate unable to complete the far less demanding local election position. Candidates Bill Crosier and Sanchez Montebello, both experienced, were not interviewed by Wilkinson at all. Montebello received a formal commendation from KPFK’s local station board in 2009 for excellence as a local election supervisor.

After Thursday night’s national board meeting, ever-discontented Houston listener rep Hank Lamb  reported back to listeners in disgust: “I am stunned at the lack of serious concern for what stations do, so long as control is maintained and alliances preserved.”. The particular source of Lamb’s upset on Thursday was a discussion of a lease for WPFW which is moving to temporary quarters for the second time in 3 years after their long-time home in DC’s City Paper building was demolished.  Lamb is discussing the closed session, but since he posted to a public list-serv, Pacifica in Exile will share his observations:

“This is being stuffed down our throats and it is being done by people who failed to do a good move with five years warning.  They made a temporary move and come to us again with another expensive temporary move that will cost a sum that would make a down payment on a million dollar building.  Their MO and any key players have not changed and they expect us to think they will do better by doing the same thing as last time, another temporary, expensive, labor intensive, listener unfriendly, move they cannot afford. They had to have a loan from KPFT to pay their healthcare very recently, but thought they could live without one of their fund drives. They didn’t have it and then they were too broke to pay for employee healthcare?  Really folks? You would let them repeat the previous five years of mistakes? When will we work to stop these mistakes from being made? Isn’t that our duty? Constant duty?  What direction do we give? Honestly. We have heard nothing from any attorney that represents Pacifica Foundation.  We are being pressured and rushed into a bad decision, which moved a huge step closer tonight. We have to have other options to consider or we are just not doing any diligence at all. Simply folding to the pressure of a WPFW imposed timeline”.

The station’s second temporary home is projected to be at 1990 K Street, right in the middle of DC’s “Lobbyist’s Row”, the home of multiple big-ticket corporate lobbying firms. The station’s staff revolted in 2012 at the idea of renting permanent space from a weather channel subsidiary of Clearchannel in Silver Spring, Maryland.

#kpfa, #savekpfa, #kpfk, #wbai, #wpfw, #kpft, #pacifica, #radio, #margy wilkinson, #lydia brazon, #raul salvador

In order to save time, Pacifica In Exile decided to let our friends over at Save KPFA write this next section about KPFA management informing paid and unpaid staffers that henceforth they will be evaluated annually on “not hurting the station or its public image in any way” and will be subjected to disciplinary action if they are perceived by management to hurt the station’s public image by being “objectionable”. The complete memo can be found here  and opens the door (again) to selective targeting of internal dissent. Here is Save KPFA’s vehement objections to such policies.

Not again! Why can’t Pacifica stop trying to censor its staff?

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Save KPFA

If you thought the drive to censor KPFA’s workers was past, think again. Pacifica has released new versions of its “employee handbook” for both paid and volunteer workers, according to KPFAWorker.org, which threaten them with termination for posting criticism of the network on their personal social media pages or private websites, or even speaking to the press.

Free speech radio won’t be so free if the Pacifica board majority has its way: “It’s shamefully obvious,” one worker tells KPFAWorker, “that Pacifica’s board majority wants to remove its workers’ voices from the conversation about the network’s future,” continuing the pro-censorship agenda begun under former Pacifica director Arlene Engelhart. Even though the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that employees have the right to post criticism of their employers, Pacifica is “so out-of-touch that it is attempting to institute a policy that is illegal on its face,” says one of the blog’s sources.

KPFA’s new general manager has not yet held a general staff meeting after 5 months on the job. He appears to be so out of touch that he is attempting to institute a policy that is illegal on its face.

Blog posts like this one by news reporter Ann Garrison expressing concern about the station’s failure to cover the local police brutality protests that have rocked the East Bay city of Oakland might be subject to disciplinary action under the programmer conduct evaluations.

Pacifica’s CFO Raul Salvador finally confirmed in writing that 2013 audit work ceased at the end of October (2 weeks after the audit began) and will not start again until next week at the earliest. Unelected chair Wilkinson’s statements throughout the month of November that the audit was “almost done” were non-factual. Pacifica’s board of directors has instructed the national office to hire extra accounting staff to complete the audits for 2013 and 2014. Pacifica has been out of compliance with the Nonprofit Integrity Act for more than 5 months.

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.

The CFO also stated Great Plains accounting software was “being installed” at WBAI and WPFW, bagging the question of where the software went in the first place. Pacifica has used the Great Plains/Microsoft Dyamics product line for at least the last 8 years.  In a particularly weird development, Salvador reported that KPFA, after laying off an accounting assistant last month to save money, hired another unbudgeted accounting assistant to finish the KPFA bank reconciliations for the 2013 audit. This means KPFA’s bank accounts just got reconciled for 9-30-2013, which is 14 months ago.

Despite the reduction in shared network fees, 4 of the 5 stations are in arrears to the national office: KPFK by $18,000, KPFA by $17,000, WBAI by $16,000 and WPFW by $9,300. No monthly financial reports have been provided to the board of directors beyond June 30, 2014, over 5 months ago.

Pacifica has not responded to questions about restricted funds being emptied, including a $50,000 grant to KPFK from the Material World Charitable Foundation run by George Harrison’s widow Olivia Harrison for music studio renovation, nor when the other half of the approximately $75,000 pledged for emergency ebola relief in October would be forwarded on to the ebola relief charity.

At Thursday’s nights national board meeting, the board also passed motions requesting an election start date of March 2, 2015 (which leaves election supervisor L.Joy Williams 60 days from her start date of January 1st to convert 10 elections spread over 5 cities to a brand new secure online voting system) and decided they would hire a new executive director for the foundation over the telephone on January 10th in order to prevent the new national board being seated in January from making the hiring decision.

The 2014 rogue board complained bitterly that they did not get to choose the last executive director, who was hired 2.5 months before they were seated. They are now acting to make a hire 2.5 weeks before their successors are seated, likely presenting a new executive director who they will have never set eyes on, with probationary status and a new board of directors that did not select them. This is the situation (multiplied several times) that led to 2014 leadership roulette, which looks likely to recur in 2015. The hiring process this year attracted only 25 candidates, as opposed to the 63 who applied in 2013, and according to the chair of the personnel committee, only 10 of the applications were “complete”. Which means the new executive director would have been through a far less competitive process.

Texas station KPFT received its sixth 6-month extension to run at half-power. KPFT’s over-stressed transmitter experienced problems during the station’s last fund drive and left the station unhearable in parts of the signal range during some of the fund drive period. KPFT’s 2015 budget does not dedicate *any* funds to equipment replacement or to development work to generate funds for the purchase, so the station remains vulnerable to catastrophic equipment failure without a plan to extricate itself nor any emergency funds in the event of a breakdown.

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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.