Exile Report: Lydia's Scorecard

[This blog bears sole responsibility for the head graphics]

Berkeley-Independent national board members Grace Aaron, Jan Goodman, Jonathan Alexander and Bill Crosier have called for another special meeting on finances. Board chair Tony Norman announced he was unilaterally cancelling the July 28th meeting in advance and board secretary Janet Kobren cancelled the posted meeting notices. But Houston listener rep Bill Crosier indicated in a public email that the called meeting would occur despite their actions. "The meeting is still on and will happen, regardless of whether you continue, in your childish manner,  to cancel the meeting listing on the kpftx calendar. I wish you would be willing to cooperate, but we’re going to have the meeting on July 28, whether you like it or not".

A more lengthy statement on why the special meeting is being called can be read here.

The special meeting is scheduled for Thursday July 28th at 8:30pm EST, 5:30pm PST. It is not known if the 14-member board majority will again boycott the meeting in their entirety as they did the previous special meeting on the financial crisis. If the meeting achieves quorum (which takes six members of the majority breaking ranks), then it will be streamed via the kpftx.org website. If the meeting does not get to a recognized quorum of 10, then the directors present will reconvene on an alternate telephone conference line and the meeting will be streamed here. {PNB Uncensored Channel}. An audio archive will be available after the meeting.

If the meeting is boycotted,  the directors present will hold a Community Town Hall in the second half of the meeting. After a discussion among themselves, including the 4 elected directors from WBAI who have been excluded all year, board members will take questions and comments from the public which can be emailed, starting now and throughout the meeting, to questionsforpnb@gmail.com. 

In the 9 months since Lydia Brazon took over as the latest volunteer executive director, Pacifica has slid into a hole so deep it may not ever get out. Pacifica has not had an executive director for 21 of the last 28 months -  nor have they scheduled an evaluation of Brazon's performance. Pacifica in Exile has decided to remedy that oversight.

So how is Brazon doing? There are a few problems.

• Losing the experienced archives director, discouraging the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force from helping to raise funds for the archives, losing the preservation fellow housed at the archives and not ensuring adequate central services funding nor developing an alternative plan for funding PRA before the potential loss of as much as 50% of Pacifica's audio history.
• 
  
• No 2016 organizational budget, no realistic plan to pay for required annual audits, payroll, health insurance for employees, directors and officers liability insurance and other necessary expenses. Allowing stations to develop draft budgets with unrealistic revenue estimates that guaranteed 2016 deficits, despite warnings this would happen (and it has).
•  
• Retaining an attorney who has significant conflicts of interest that prevent him from providing unbiased legal help.
• 
  
• Using restricted grants for operating expenses.
•  
• Allowing the General Manager of KPFK to violate the union agreement and bargain in bad faith.
• 
  
• Not getting timely audits done as the law requires.
• 
  
• Not requiring WBAI, WPFW and KPFK to develop a workable plan to send out promised premiums/thank-you gifts to donors or at least to contact donors with undelivered premiums.
• 
  
• Refusing to update the PNB on any investigation that might have occurred regarding allegations of copyright infringement.
• 
  
• *Failing to ensure that WBAI has at least one working telephone with a public number.
• 
  
• Not requiring WBAI and WPFW, nor helping them to, develop a workable plan to reverse their dramatic drops in listener support.
• 
  
• Failing to present a realistic strategic plan for Pacifica to increase the overall number of individual listeners and the time they spend listening, to improve the quality of programs, to increase the per day fund drive totals, to increase both on air and off air fundraising, improve the financial accounting infrastructure so financial reporting is done in an accurate and timely manner or establish professional human resources capacity.
• 
  
• Failing to ensure that KPFA repays funds from the bequest received last year that were intended for the Pacifica Foundation after the PNB voted last year to require those funds be given to the national office.
• 
  
• Failing to ensure compliance with all federal, state and local laws, regulations and reporting requirements including Title 7 training.

Grade: Fail

Since Lydia Brazon has been interim Executive Director (iED) of Pacifica, the financial, legal, and organizational problems have continued to multiply, and member numbers continue to dwindle. Plans for reversing the acute downward slide are nowhere to be found. Please sign the petition to tell the PNB it's time to let Lydia Brazon go as volunteer iED.

Pacifica needs a new interim Executive Director who will work full-time to preserve all of the stations and put Pacifica on a course to return to sustainable operations. 

Given the rate of acceleration of Pacifica's financial decline, the special meeting on the 28th may tackle some pretty grim subjects, among them the prospects of taking one or more stations temporarily dark or future prospects in a bankruptcy court.

In the month since the last special meeting on finances was called, the official board of directors has done almost nothing; passing a motion to pay the 2014 audit fee and then not paying it  - and quibbling over which units would get political convention pledges, which are turning out to be so meager they may not even cover the direct costs of producing the coverage. The one thing the board did do was miss WBAI's payroll on July 15th. The CFO has warned of other upcoming payrolls that are likely not to be met (Including Washington's this week). With directors liability insurance expiring on August 11th, being on the Pacifica board of directors is becoming an increasingly risky proposition.

While some board reps have chirped about how bankruptcy could be a fresh start (William Campisi - KPFA), (Jose-Luis Fuentes - KPFA), (Brian Edwards-Tiekert-KPFA), the reality is that entering into voluntary bankruptcy is a process fraught with risks, from creditors issuing their *own* reorganization plans - on their terms - to the FCC repossessing Pacifica's licenses. In the case of New York  and Berkeley, the radio licenses might be released back into the commercial band (both stations are convertible), ending any ongoing existence for either as non-commercial radio stations. 

Less drastic actions might include local management agreements (LMA's) or temporary shutdowns in order to quickly cut expenses and reboot struggling stations with a different operational plan. Cash infusions, while only a temporary bandaid over ongoing losses, may be possible from the mortgage or sale of the national office building contingent on securing an up to date audit report. Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, the lowest hanging fruit for a cash infusion, has been pretty much removed from the picture by the board majority shenanigans with the audits. The late audits that began in 2014 have cost the network $2,000 a day for more than two years. At this point, $1.75 million in grant funding is unrecoverable, and the remaining $500,000 would require the rapid submission of two audit reports, one of which has not been started, and an immediate cash outlay of about $150,000.

To ask questions about the difficult decisions facing the board and Pacifica's members, send your thoughts and inquiries to questionsforpnb@gmail.com on or before July 28th. 

All 5 Pacifica stations are in the midst of another election cycle. Many feel this election is the last chance for Pacifica. Please vote beginning on August 15th. You can visit elections.pacifica.org for more information. For any ballot related question at any station, you can contact King Reilly, a KPFK member, for assistance at kingreilly@roadrunner.com

If you would like to support either or both of the legal complaints filed by Pacifica members, you can visit the Clean Up Pacifica Project for more information.

A timeline of the now two year old coup by the Siegel/Brazon faction can be seen here.