budget

Financial statements show that KPFA is still owed $1.4 million by Pacifica

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At the March 3rd Local Station Board meeting, treasurer Barbara Whipperman and KPFA business manager Maria Negret reported serious problems getting documentation from Pacifica for “bill-back” expenses being passed on to KPFA. Each of the five Pacifica-owned stations, including KPFA, are obligated to pay 19.5% of their income to the network for central services. “Bill-backs” are in addition to that.

Over the past 16 months, Pacifica has been receiving and keeping funds intended for KPFA, including grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, bequests, and stock donations — ostensibly to apply toward debt KPFA owes it. Often, KPFA doesn’t find out Pacifica has accepted money on its behalf until months after the fact.

The amount of KPFA funding that Pacifica has intercepted over the last 16 months adds up to about $681,700. KPFA has also been paying bills from Pacifica “bill-backs” for legal expenses, administrative services, and the like — if you add the money KPFA has paid directly to the amount Pacifica has intercepted, the total is approximately $854,000. Here’s the problem: Pacifica’s bills to KPFA over the same period only total to $700,000.

So what happened to the $154,000 KPFA overpaid? “Well, that’s what we would like to know,” the business manager said.

Meanwhile, the bills from Pacifica have been short on detail. For instance: Pacifica charged KPFA $115,000 in legal expenses relating to “labor issues” in the past 16 months, but has provided KPFA very little documentation on what the charges are for. In past years, Pacifica shared itemized billing statements from attorneys, and KPFA’s staff were able to catch items incorrectly charged to KPFA for expenses incurred at other stations. Now, KPFA’s staff don’t even know what the station is being charged for.

“If Visa were to send you a bill in the mail and say ‘you owe $10,000,’ would you just pay it without asking what that was about?” said Negret.
Pacifica’s financial statements also show that its National Office and other parts of the network still owe KPFA $1.4 million dollars in long-term debt. | LISTEN to 3 minute clip of business manager | LISTEN to the entire board meeting: part 1, part 2, part 3

KPFA on the brink: pledge drive falls $125,000 short

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Recall endoser Larry Bensky with KPFA's Antonio Ortiz & John Hamilton
Recall endoser Larry Bensky with KPFA's Antonio Ortiz & John Hamilton

The station ended its Winter Fund Drive one week ago, $125,000 short of its pledge goal. This is sad news for everyone who cares about KPFA, and it underscores the importance of change at Pacifica.

Pacifica’s re-programming of 6-10 AM is behind the shortfall. Those time slots used to raise 40% of KPFA’s total pledges. Since the destruction of the Morning Show, that’s dropped by more than half. For a time, station management was able to offset the plunge by lengthening fund drives, but they’ve run into diminishing returns from that strategy. (This year’s Winter Fund Drive ran 24 days, a whopping 50% increase from the length of the last Winter Fund Drive before the Morning Show was axed).

By any measure, the morning lineup that Pacifica imposed on KPFA has been a catastrophic failure. But instead of fixing it, Rosenberg, and the Pacifica managers she backs, are still defending it. They rejected over $63,000 that SaveKPFA raised to pay for the reinstatement of the Morning Show. They spent more money on lawyers to fight Morning Show co-host Aimee Allison‘s reinstatement than it would have cost to keep her on payroll for a year. And they’ll keep doing it until KPFA’s voting members call them to account.

Democracy when? Still no ballots and paychecks bouncing

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Still nothing from Pacifica on when ballots will go out in the  recall of Tracy Rosenberg. As a reminder: Pacifica’s own rules for recall elections required it to send out ballots no later than December 30, 2011. That’s nearly 6 weeks ago!

One thing Pacifica’s delay has accomplished (probably by design): it’s bought Rosenberg time to build a campaign machine, and for the Pacifica-imposed interim manager at KPFA to start using station resources to support her efforts.

Thank you to those who have signed the online petition (over 1100 currently) or written letters to Pacifica demanding an impartial recall supervisor. SaveKPFA is also considering legal options for forcing Pacifica to comply with its own rules.

Now Pacifica’s bouncing paychecks, too
KPFAWorker.org has published an email from KPFA’s union, CWA Local 9415, sent to Pacifica management. The message spoke to two issues: bounced paychecks and the network’s illegal withholding of retirement contributions. Several employees across Pacifica’s stations — including one at KPFA — took their paychecks to the bank in January and got nothing to show for it but a bounced check fee. There’s been no explanation from management to staff about why it happened, or what Pacifica is doing to prevent a recurrence. Bouncing paychecks is a criminal offense.

This comes on the heels of revelations by KPFA’s union last fall that Pacifica had been diverting workers’ contributions to their retirement plans in order to pay other bills. At the time, Pacifica promised workers it would 1) catch up on payments to their accounts — which it eventually did, 2) pay them the legal minimum interest rate on the catch up payments — which it hasn’t yet, and 3) make timely contributions in the future. On that last point, KPFA workers report that their retirement accounts should have had two deposits from Pacifica in January — they’ve had none.