It was announced last night that personnel reduction notices will be issued at KPFA and $250,000 in layoffs will be implemented in the next 30 days.
No notification was given to the local or national boards of the massive layoffs (13% of the total payroll), which succeed five new hires made in the past 8 months. Continue reading Quarter Million Dollars in Layoffs at KPFA in 15 Days
by Bill Crosier
I agree with Hank {Lamb} and Brian {Shiratsuki} that we should all welcome the AG audit and the corrective changes that will hopefully come from it. I also agree with Brian {Shiratsuki} and Nalini {Lazsciewicz} and others who have commented on how our bylaws, despite good intentions by a lot of people, have been a miserable failure in producing functional boards. Of course, people who like things the way they are now will be afraid of what the AG may find or what the AG may do, and are undoubtedly thinking about how they can convince the AG to leave Pacifica alone and let them continue fiddling while Rome burns. Continue reading The Attorney General Audit And The Real Emergency
How can you blame the inability to pay your bills on not getting a grant that you knew you weren’t going to get?
Is the assertion being made here that KPFA has to lay off employees because it spent CPB funds it knew it was ineligible to receive 6 months ago?
Former PNB Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg sent the enclosed note to the Pacifica National Board this morning, after the Save KPFA propaganda rag announced that KPFA, already not having paid network services for the past six weeks, does not have enough money to pay its bills for the next month, after two fund drives collected $1.2 million dollars in pledges in the last 94 days, Continue reading Where Did KPFA’s Money Go?
Originally posted December 27, 2014
Berkeley-In response to a March 2014 complaint from 8 former board members who served on the Pacifica National Board between 2008 and 2013, the Registry of Charitable Trusts, the division of the California AG that supervises California nonprofit organizations, has launched a comprehensive audit of Pacifica Radio’s accounting and compliance functions. The scope of the initial document request is broad and encompasses most financial records from the past five years of operations. (see list below). Continue reading California Attorney General Launches Audit of Pacifica Radio
As an explanatory vote, Hank Lamb’s attempt received 5 votes in support besides his own. Four of them were from the minority faction (Uzzell, Coleman, Birden, Gray). One was from the board majority (Reyes). The other two minority faction members present abstained (Reiter and Kaufman). The other majority board members present voted no (Edwards-Tiekert, Wilkinson, Brazon, Argueta, Diaz, Brown, Roberts and Casenave). Here are Hank Lamb’s comments:
Continue reading To all Pacifica Members, the US Public and all Pacifica Staff and volunteers:
This announcement is running on KPFA encouraging listeners to donate to make up for money withheld by a “quasi-governmental agency.” It does not mention that the money is being held up due to incomplete bookkeeping both at the radio station and its parent, the Pacifica Foundation.
From Richard Uzzell, Pacifica Board of Directors, KPFT Listener Rep. Announced publicly on December 23, 2014
The Pacifica Board of Directors was informed today by IED, Margy Wilkinson of a December 17, 2014 letter (sent almost a week earlier) from California Deputy Attorney General, Julianne Mossler, “for Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General.” This was the first that the Board (as a whole) was informed of this letter the California Attorney General and the action it is taking toward the Pacifica Foundation Radio.
Continue reading California Attorney General To Audit Pacifica
The enclosed sound clip details the CFO report from the Pacifica National Board meeting of 12-18-2014. The report provides details on the stalled 2013 audit, the financial straits of the network and its radio stations and a heated discussion with KPFT listener rep Richard Uzzell about months of promises that the audit would proceed in as soon as June of 2014, although it did not begin until November 15th, ended after less than a week due to the inability to provide audit schedules and now has no scheduled date of completion. Pacifica stations will not be able to get out of suspended status with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and regain a million dollars in annual funding unless the 2013 and 2014 audits are completed and filed by March 31, 2014.
The enclosed sound clip is from the Pacifica National Board meeting of December 18th 2014 and chronicles a weird interchange where in response to a question from KPFA listener rep Janet Kobren about open hiring practices at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, IED Margy Wilkinson hems and haws and basically admits hiring processes for temporary and casual positions were not open and that should be changed. KPFA staff rep Brian Edwards-Tiekert strangely jumps into the dialogue to aggressively defend the hiring of a temporary producer for his own program “Upfront” only to be reprimanded that the question was not specifically about his own program.
Pacifica’s personnel policy specifies that the nonprofit is an equal opportunity employer that practices affirmative action to increase workplace diversity.
