Berkeley-At Thursday’s national board meeting, the majority spent most of the meeting passing a resolution instructing station management to “run their operations more productively” by such actions as calling credit card donors whose credit cards don’t go through and encouraging past donors to renew. Houston listener rep Bill Crosier attempted to amend the resolution to also address the content being broadcast. He proposed rolling back program changes in the last 12 months that generated less net fund drive revenue than the pre-change content. Continue reading Striking Out Solvency→
Berkeley-Pacifica filed a postponement request one day before a scheduled hearing on a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to restore voting rights for WBAI’s PNB delegation and seat elected staff delegate Kathryn Davis. The complaint can be seen here. Pacifica asked for time to secure legal representation in the State of New York and the hearing date was rescheduled to April 29th. According to the plaintiff’s attorney Gary Carlton, a temporary restraining order staying any Pacifica meetings barring voting rights for elected WBAI delegates is in effect until Pacifica appears in court or files an objection and both the meeting notice for an April 13th WBAI local station board meeting and last night’s Pacifica National Board meeting can be characterized as ignoring a court order by the Siegel/Brazon board majority. Continue reading Who Cares About A Court Order?→
Despite the obstructurama put up by the Siegel/Brazon faction, the audit commitee finally managed to speak briefly to the auditor, Grant Lam from Armanino.
Berkeley-It was a busy week for the Pacifica Foundation in the New York court system as two new lawsuits were filed against the radio network, a judgment was entered and a complaint was temporarily withdrawn. On April 7th, a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) will be heard In New York City to restore voting rights for WBAI’s PNB delegation and seat elected staff delegate Kathryn Davis. The complaint can be seen here.Continue reading Two Lawsuits And A Judgment→
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→
Berkeley– Pacifica has installed a new chief financial officer by the name of Sam Agarwal. The board moved quickly, making Agarwal the signatory for all bank accounts and vendor relationships within days of his arrival. Agarwal’s last full-time CFO position was with San Francisco’s Equal Access, a nonprofit that sets up media projects in developing countries. Equal Access, according to their 2014 annual report, was funded by the US Embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US AID – Office of Transition Initiatives, The US Department of State – Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, The US Department of State – Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, The US Department of State – Middle East Partnership Initiative, The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Continue reading New CFO From State Department Funded NGO→
A snippet from Tuesday’s national finance committee meeting, which displays the Siegel/Brazon majority wiggling out of Bill Crosier’s sensible motion that requirements for Texas station KPFT to have reality-based budget numbers be applied to the other four stations as well. Continue reading Double Standards: All Budgets Are Not Equal→
Berkeley–Global Village host Derek Rath was the latest long-time staffer to blast KPFK and Pacifica management, saying in a September 8th email that “you are either not thinking straight or you are trying to bring down the station”. Rath’s whole email in which he describes management and the boards as “out of sync with reality” can be read here. Continue reading Not Thinking Straight→
Thanks to some detective work, there is an update of sorts on the audit situation.
The payment pulled from KPFA’s bequest fund in July was made to Armanino in the amount of $45,000. Although Pacifica’s lead auditor at Armanino Grant Lam apparently is unaware, Armanino cleared the check.
However the audit has not started. The statement by Grant Lam that no work has been done on the 2014 audit despite it being 60 days past the deadline for both CPB and the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the CA AG Office is correct.
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Pacifica’s fiscal 2014 audit (for the period 10-1-2013 to 9-30-2014) was due to the State of California Registry of Charitable Trusts (which is currently investigating Pacifica for failure to comply with charitable laws) and to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which suspended Pacifica from eligible status for public media funding in June of 2014) was revealed on Tuesday night to have been neither paid for nor started, 11 months after the close of the fiscal year and 56 days after the legal deadline for submission to the State.
Berkeley – Despite receiving over $9.3 million dollars in charitable contributions between October 1, 2014 and May 31, 2015, Pacifica Radio has indicated that it is unable to pay a $55,000 outstanding bill to auditor Armanino LLC in order to meet legal requirements to continue operating as a licensed not for profit organization in the State of California. California’s Nonprofit Integrity Act requires all California charitable corporations with gross revenues of $2 million or more to prepare annual financial statements audited by an independent certified public accountant (CPA). The audited financial statements must be made available for inspection by the Attorney General and the public no later than nine months after the close of the fiscal year covered by the financial statement. Pacifica’s deadline was June 30, 2015. The radio network is in the middle of an investigation launched in December of 2014 by the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the California Attorney General’s office.
