Only One Faction Votes In New York

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Berkeley-The Pacifica National Board, which met on March 3rd for the first time in a month after two consecutive disrupted meetings on January 28th and February 4th, doubled down on their disenfranchisement of WBAI-FM. The board again prevented 4 NY directors elected on January 26th from participating in the meeting and insisted on their authority to seat the last place finisher from the 2012 election in the NY local board’s vacant seat, instead of the first runner-up from the recently completed election. The national board’s interference has brought NY to a halt as the national board attempts to undo the 13-11 independent majority elected by the voters in order to deliver the Siegel/Brazon faction a 12-12 tie.

In a particularly absurd twist, the national board spent more than half an hour elaborately constructing a rationale to give participation and voting rights to the 2015 Siegel/Brazon faction NY representative Cerene Roberts, while continuing to eliminate participation and voting rights for all of the 2015 and the 2016 WBAI representatives from the independent group that holds the majority on the WBAI local station board.  Continue reading Only One Faction Votes In New York

Treasurer’s Report From KPFK Local Board Meeting 2-21

 

KPFK Local board member Myla Reson videotaped the treasurer’s report from the KPFK local station board meeting, after a brief interruption when bookkeeper and gadfly Bella De Soto tried to knock the camera out of her hand.

The videotape includes treasurer Fred Blair’s report and follow-up comments by former treasurer Kim Kaufman. which are trenchant, on-point and very worth your time to listen to.

Pay To Vote Or Just Cede Control To Me – KPFA Local Board 2-27

 

KPFA’s local station board meeting 2-27: the first speaker is Save Kpfa member William Campisi who proposes that national voting rights should be stripped from stations that fall behind on central service payments and then that Pacifica should go into voluntary bankruptcy if it isn’t willing to cede national control to KPFA.

Campisi apparently doesn’t realize that under his plan, his own station KPFA, would have had “its” voting  rights stripped from October 2015 to February 2016 when it failed to pay central services due to financial troubles – and for two a half years from January of 2010 to June of 2012 when KPFA was slowly paying back $250,000 in unpaid central service payments to Pacifica in installments.

The second speaker is Save KPFA member and national director  Jose-Luis Fuentes who says the other stations in Washington, LA and New York are eyeing KPFA’s fund drive receipts to “subsidize their standard of living”.

Fuentes appears to be unaware that in order to restore CPB funding, Pacifica would have to produce not one, but two, annual audits in the next 88 days, as the FY 2015 audit would be due at the end of June 2016. The $150,000 he quotes for the FY 2014 audit is roughly twice the estimate and twice what an audit for an organization of Pacifica’s size should cost.

The third speaker is UCR-affiliated unpaid staff rep Frank Sterling, who speaks with heart and intelligence and in addition to acknowledging that all of the stations are equally important, brings up the issue of shell corporations being set up to “catch” Pacifica’s assets .

Pinocchio’s Nose: Carole Travis at KPFA Local Board 2-27

 

In this astounding clip from the 2-27 KPFA Local Station Board Meeting, SaveKPFA-affiliated board chair Carole Travis grows her nose by saying the KPFA Foundation shell corporation was set up *because* of complaints filed with the CA Attorney General to “scoop” things up in the event of government intervention. The papers were filed with the CA Secretary of State who stamped them received on September 24, 2013, six months *before* the initial complaint was filed with the CA Attorney General. Travis also says the KPFA Foundation is “dissolved” and then “collapsed”. It’s still listed as an active nonprofit organization with the CA Secretary of State *today*.

KPFA Foundation-Articles

Attorney General Complaint Non-Confidential

https://soundcloud.com/tracy-rosenberg/carole-travis-at-kpfa-loca-station-board

No More Listener Supported Radio

 

In this action-packed snip from the 2-23 Pacifica national finance committee, WPFW’s general manager announces that his station is “on the precipice of major underwriting” and that WPFW has changed its motto from “listener-supported radio” to accommodate support from business organizations.

The upshot of the meeting appears to be a straw man confrontation engineered by the Siegel/Brazon board majority for either Pacifica to accept business underwriting after 67 years of eschewing it, or be driven into bankruptcy court with the assets parceled out to various board members.

In other news, CFO Agarwal says that he and volunteer ED Lydia Brazon have developed proposals in secret for alternate sources of funding besides listener support that have “legal ramifications”.

Agarwal also stated that the 2014 audit (after 17 months) was both “on-track” and “backlogged”, that there was no immediate prospect of CPB funding, and that Pacifica’s monthly income statements are neither reliable nor accurate.

In a funny exchange with nominal board chair Tony Norman, Agarwal complained that Norman’s station WPFW is not transparent with their financial info and refuses to allow him access to their bank account. Norman promised to get right on it if Agarwal would just cc: him the correspondence and Agarwal says that he has been cc:ing Norman all along and Norman is fully apprised.

Fraud Is A Major Concern Of The Auditor

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Berkeley-While Pacifica waits and waits and waits for an audit of the 2014 fiscal year, which ended 17 months ago, new CFO Sam Agarwal informed the national finance committee that “fraud was a major concern of the auditor”, currently Armanino LLP.  In fact, he said it twice in a minute and a half.  Agarwal added that “we don’t know if all the donations have been accounted for” and that “it would be very easy for anyone to open up a bank account and deposit the donations and that would not be recorded in the Pacifica books”. You can hear his comments here. Continue reading Fraud Is A Major Concern Of The Auditor

Flip-Flopper

 

In the February 9th, Pacifica National Board finance committee meeting, former Pacifica ED and board chair Lydia Brazon is heard insisting that “of course” members of Pacifica boards and committees get to stay on as voting members until they are replaced. The Pacifica National Board had its last two meetings disrupted because the Siegel/Brazon majority stripped voting rights from all the NY station representatives claiming neither the new ones nor the old ones could vote. If only Ms. Brazon had piped up with her statement at the national board meeting where her colleagues didn’t do what “we’ve been doing”. Twice. Continue reading Flip-Flopper

Who Needs A Vote?

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Berkeley-Mozart did not make an appearance at the second disrupted national board meeting in a week, but while the sounds were less than musical, the outcome was the same: meeting interuptus. Doubling down on their outrageous stripping of all national voting rights from NY station WBAI and the seating of two bogus affiliate directors from non-affiliated stations, the rump majority did not even keep their promise to allow WBAI’s 2015 directors to “participate, but not vote”. They didn’t send WBAI the meeting codes and hung up on them when they called in. In fact they hung up on everybody, including duly elected directors from other stations as KPFT director Bill Crosier stated: “I was repeatedly disconnected from the call. I have not been making any interruptions, but tried several times to raise a point of order and was never recognized, but my call was disconnected several times. This is highly improper. Whoever is controlling the conference call has no right to just disconnect anyone they don’t want to talk, even when making valid points of order”.

Crosier provided a Skype log documenting 5 disconnections. Continue reading Who Needs A Vote?

Mozart Meeting: Civil Disbedience

 

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BerkeleyThursday’s Pacifica National Board meeting turned into a Mozart sonata after the Siegel/Brazon faction insisted on preventing both the 2016 and 2015 directors from WBAI-FM from voting in the meeting. The music, which played for more than 40 minutes on the conference call line, was preceded by numerous objections to the board majority’s actions, which included trying to seat two affiliate directors self-nominated by stations without affiliate agreements to represent the 200 affiliated stations, refusing the seat four directors elected by NY’s delegate assembly on January 26th: staffer Shawn Rhodes and listener reps Bob Young, Alex Steinberg and Frank LeFever and refusing to allow the 2015 directors from WBAI to vote in their stead, leaving the NY station completely disenfranchised. A clip of some of the meeting can be heard here.
Continue reading Mozart Meeting: Civil Disbedience