It’s difficult to cut through all the rhetoric.
With WBAI and WPFW in better (still not good) shape now, perhaps they’re afraid she’ll be able to direct more of her attention to the west coast stations, and that she’s going to clean them up, and lay off a few employee friends of theirs who the stations cannot afford to keep on the payroll, and maybe find some things they’d rather keep hidden (such as why the general ledgers at both west coast stations have taken a year or more to get reconciled so the audit can proceed).
They already know she’s serious about it — she eased out the previous management at KPFA and KPFK, who refused orders from both Arlene [Engelhardt] and Summer to cut expenses and excessive staff budgets (and got those two managers out without lawsuits – a major accomplishment in Pacifica). She recently put in a new and talented interim General Manager at KPFK who seems to understand finances, and now they’re trying to stop her from putting in someone who is similarly qualified at KPFA. Is that what they’re afraid of?
Summer had been trying to get the (previous) managers at KPFA and KPFK, and the past/recently re-hired CFO, to get the general ledgers reconciled at those stations. She wants to investigate why it takes over a year to do that, and to find out what are they trying to hide. Everyone in Pacifica should want that, too. But Summer’s enemies don’t seem to be interested in that, even though it suggests either gross incompetence or illegal or unethical conduct.
The 2013 PNB terminated the CFO, following what I’m told was an unacceptable performance review, who presided over financial matters and who was responsible for getting the KPFA-KPFK financial mess cleaned up but who didn’t. Now that Summer can shift more of her focus and energies from the east coast stations to the west coast stations, her enemies are determined to stop her, and even to install some of the very same managers who were in charge while the messed-up finances at KPFA and KPFK were ignored and the books remained unreconciled for over a year. Again, this looks extremely suspicious to me.
I apologize for the long history lesson, but I wanted to clear up some continuing incorrect stories about our recent history. My dream is that we’ll be able to move on to more important topics, like KEEPING PACIFICA ALIVE, and maybe even getting the boards to focus on boring topics that involve actual work, like getting more listeners, getting more members, getting more revenue, while remembering our mission — in other words, HELPING PACIFICA GROW. Is it just a dream?
Bill Crosier
[email protected]
3-27-14
Bill Crosier served on KPFT's LSB from 2007-2012 (6 years), was vice chair of KPFT's LSB the first year and chair the next two years. He sat on the PNB (and was vice chair of it) the last 3 years (2010-2012). He was also on multiple Pacifica national committees each year and chaired some of those.