What's ahead?

Here is the chosen one, John Proffitt, speaking briefly at a KPFT Roast for Ray Hill, April 4, 2015. He isn't talking about his new job, but this clip (courtesy of KPFT's Bill Crosier) will leave you with a vague impression of this man. He has followers and detractors on both sides of the PNB table, I think, so let's see what he does when he takes over. At least he's not one of Murillo's Marauders.

And here is Madame Rosenberg's latest sobriety message re Pacifica's own audit.

Berkeley-Pacifica's much-delayed FY 2013 financial audit, after 11 months in the making, $80,000 spent, and close to 300 hours of auditing services, has been exposed as faulty with double-accrued expenses. The entry of the same bills twice was caused by the tumult instigated by the 2014 rogue board which has been utterly resistant to competent financial staffing and has not even seen a list of how much money Pacifica owes. The late audited financial statements, delivered 9 months after the 6-30-2014 State of California deadline, don't hold up under scrutiny. Simple questions like the Audit Committee's request for a list of accued legal expenses, revealed six-figure disrepancies with the general ledger and failures to reduce accounts payable after paying bills, a pretty basic bookkeeping requirement.

The board of directors has sniffed at documentation the audit is inaccurate, clinging to desperate protestations of  "at least its done" and expressing disinterest in whether the figures are accurate. This audio snippet from the Audit committee on 3-10 illustrates the majority faction's attitude (the speaker is William Heerwagon, a long time Justice and Unity member from NY and staunch ally of the majority faction). He admits he is approving something he doesn't understand and refers to requests for supporting documentation as "details, details". 

After finding and reporting a $75,000 double-accrual of a legal expense inserted during the FY 2013 audit,  former Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg commented" "If I was able to identify that in just two hours of looking at the general ledger, it is astonishing CFO Salvador after nine months and auditor Armanino after billing for 300 hours could not do the same".

Pacifica has not signed a letter of engagement with an auditing firm for the fiscal year 2014, which ended over six months ago and will not meet the Corporation for Public Broadcasting April 17th deadline, forfeiting another million dollars in public media funding.  It also appears unlikely Pacifica will meet the 6-30-2014 deadline for state filing of the 2014 audit, placing their nonprofit status in jeopardy with serial violations of the Nonprofit Integrity Act. Pacifica is currently under investigation by the CA Attorney General Charitable Trusts Division.

The loss of Pacifica's CPB-eligibility, in addition to the forfeiture of CSG and NPPAG annual grant funding, would also remove the Pacifica stations from the Soundexchange group agreement for online streaming costs for copyrighted music. The Pacifica stations, once booted from CPB, can only be covered via membership in the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) trade association. But financial statements delivered to the National Finance Committee by CFO Raul Salvador indicate only two of the five Pacifica stations have made membership dues payments to NFCB.  Neither KPFK, WBAI or WPFW seems to have paid NFCB membership dues, which may leave them liable for direct copyright payments to Sound Exchange for every streamed broadcast.

Pacifica's programming is created in one of two ways. Some hosts/producers are volunteers who receive broadcast time in response to uncompensated labor. Others are paid staffers who receive union-level salaries for their hosting/production work and whose work product belongs to their employer. KPFK's Uprising, which is also simulcast on the Berkeley station, KPFA, belongs to the latter category, with two full-time host/producer salaries paid by Pacifica station KPFK. The program recently received video broadcast rights on Free Speech TV, and Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar crowd-sourced funds on the Indiegogo platform to purchase video equipment and pay production staff to shoot the video version of the radio show for FSTV.

Unfortunately, as detailed in previous editions of Pacifica In Exile, 50% of the funds raised on Indiegogo were removed from the restricted account in September and October of 2014, used to pay KPFK's health benefits and telephone bills, and not replaced. Kolhatkar has responded to that theft with her own initiative, privately selling Pacifica's show via a Youtube channel for a monthly subscription fee, while continuing to draw a full-time salary from KPFK for hosting/producing the program.

Pacifica finally has a new executive director, after a year with none. The choice is former KUHF CEO John Proffitt, an NPR veteran who led the University of Houston's radio station for 26 years. Proffitt was not the first choice of the board's majority faction who did not support his candidacy and instead offered the job to labor writer Bill Fletcher Jr, who declined. When the board majority was told to offer the position to the 2nd most highly ranked candidate, Proffiitt in January, they balked and refused, instead insisting that the entire board redo its selection process, in hopes of securing majority support for another candidate. After a two month delay, they proved unable to do that and have reluctantly gone ahead and offered the job to Proffitt, who accepted.

While it remains to be seen if the NPR veteran can adjust to Pacifica's quite-different culture and overcome the lack of support from the board majority, the end of the hobbyist ED is a good development for Pacifica. Hopefully the board will let the new executive director make some much-needed changes in the troubled organization. For those interested, here is a brief audio clip of Proffitt speaking at a Houston fundraising event.

In Los Angeles, KPFK, the network's fundraising leader for the last few years, has dropped into an impromptu week-long fund drive this week, barely 6 weeks after the last lengthy fund drive concluded and less than 4 weeks after the next lengthy fund drive is supposed to begin.  —Tracy Rosenberg 

Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board at pnb@pacifica.org.

Tracy Rosenberg views the pros and cons of Proffitt.

Vying for the Sledgehammer Award...

IPD ANNOUNCES SCHEDULE CHANGES

Mama has spoken, so let's hear what you think....

If you thought Pacifica was not for Proffitt...

Considering the current majority on the vote-casting PNB, this may well turn out to have been a mistake, but it can't get any worse than it has been since the last coup. What do you think, Houston good guys?

UPDATE 4/5/15: AFTER MUCH SLINGING OF HASH AND DOMESTIC CAVIAR ON PACIFICARADIOWAVES, TRACY ROSENBERG ADDS HER SOBERING OBSERVATIONS:

Okay folks. I will endorse Kevin's point here as there is entirely too much "making shit up" going on around here. Nature apparently abhors a vacuum and when people don't know things, they fabricate things to fill the void. A lot of that going on. As with most things, there are good and bad aspects and the hiring of Mr. Proffitt is one of those things, so let's clear out the myths so we can be clear about what Pacifica is currently facing.

The first thing to say is that Mr. Proffitt assuredly was not the preferred ED candidate of the board majority. Not even close. They initially offered the job to another individual, labor writer Bill Fletcher Jr, who rejected the job offer. Mr Proffitt had virtually no support from the board majority at all. After the board majority's preferred candidate concluded he did not want the job, the board majority forcibly rejected the obvious conclusion that they should offer the job to the second place finisher, Mr Proffitt, going to a great deal of trouble to convene another entire selection process in order to try to garner enough support for "anybody but Proffitt". If the board majority wanted to hire Mr. Proffitt, they could have done so in January and they chose not to do so. The upshot of the delay is that the board majority was unable to build enough support for another candidate and was left with nobody but Mr. Proffitt. This is a defeat for them and not the outcome they wished.

There are good and bad aspects to Mr. Proffitt's hiring and I can speak to some of them by virtue of being on the 2013 ED search/Personnel committee and going through a hiring process where Mr. Proffitt was a candidate.

On the good side, I believe the skill set is reasonable for the job, and I don't believe the administrative and contractual aspects of the job, which are extensive, will be beyond Mr. Proffitt.  I also have some faith in his financial oversight skills, which are obviously very needed at Pacifica.

On the bad side, Mr. Proffitt as I pointed out in 2013, is a dyed in the wool NPR man, and if you wanted a better example of "the NPRization of Pacifica", as it was called in 1999, you could not find a clearer one. The hiring of John Hughes in DC, who had a similar NPR background, provides an illustration of what happens when career NPR folks take management positions at Pacifica. A big cultural collision. The KUHF/KUHA program schedules show straight up talk syndication and classical music, and do not demonstrate any meaningful experience with generating local unique public affairs, working with volunteer programmers or with musical genres other than classical, which are stations extremely different than those Pacifica operates. It does not surprise me that Proffitt had little to no interest in the maintenance of KTRU, as it was a very different kind of station than the kind he operated. The problem for us is that the Pacifica stations have more in common with KTRU than with KUHF. 

I am not going to say that a person cannot adjust, and I will agree with Mary Ann that it is unfair to make assumptions. However it is not an attack on someone to point out their history, and I can assure Kenya that no, the board of directors did not ask any questions about KTRU or PRC nor take that history into account, if they even knew much of anything about it other than that KTRU broadcasts in HD on KPFT's digital channels. 

My recollection of Mr. Proffitt's career trajectory (and this was more than a year ago) is that he did not see his occupancy of the position as a long-term likelihood and so my basic response to this appointment is that it is likely a placeholder-type appointment. My modest hopes are that Mr. Proffitt would clean up some financial chicanery and put in a little fundraising infrastructure at the national office and keep GM's and the CFO accountable for adequate job performance. If he can do these things, the situation will be less-bad than it currently is. The long-term transition of Pacifica to healthier organization probably lies in other hands.

WBAI's very own studio... at last!

In a public post aimed at WBAI's "GM", Berthold Reimers, R. Paul Martin had this reminder, and a question:

"Berthold, you told the LSB at the March 11, meeting that CCNY 'Strongly,

strongly,' wanted WBAI to leave the CCNY studios by March 31. Please tell us what's happening with that."

As the day winds down, R. Paul adds: "Management hasn't even broached the issue with the on-air Staff."

Nothing has happened, so there may well be truth in the inside rumor that popped up on the BlueBoard this morning:

"No move until May. It was a ruse to get Pacifica to lift the embargo on checks over a certain amount. Yep it is as nuts as that - let's all yell fire."