Matt Ward

Rosenberg blocks recall vote count

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kpfa with bannerAn Alameda County judge has granted Pacifica treasurer Tracy Rosenberg‘s request to block any counting of the thousands of ballots in the recall election against her cast by KPFA members this summer.

The election was triggered after more than 800 KPFA listeners who signed petitions seeking Rosenberg’s removal from the Pacifica National Board over her role in killing the Morning Show, misappropriating members’ email addresses, and other abuses. At the time, the Morning Show was the most listened-to program produced at KPFA, and the station’s biggest fundraiser.

Rosenberg delays vote, then sues over delay
Shortly before the ballot count was to take place, Rosenberg filed suit against Pacifica, whose national office she effectively ran by proxy during the tenure of the soon-to-depart executive director Arlene Engelhardt. Rosenberg’s suit said there was an illegal delay between the cutoff date for voting eligibility and the date ballots actually hit the mail.

Witnesses watch as supervisor sequesters KPFA ballots.

Pacifica’s filings did not dispute the fact that its conduct of the recall election against her had broken the law — instead, it argued that Rosenberg used her position on the Pacifica National Board to contribute to the delay of sending out recall ballots, and that she knew about the deadlines being used for the election, but waited until the last possible moment to file suit over them.

Pacifica offered to correct its violation by sending out additional ballots to people who would have been eligible to vote if not for the early cutoff — but Rosenberg’s attorney rejected that proposal. That’s not the conduct of someone who wants to fix an election — it’s the conduct of someone who fears she’s lost the vote, and wants to keep it from being counted.

What next?

The judge’s decision does not bar Pacifica from sending out new recall ballots, as long as it uses a new eligibility date. Rosenberg’s own court filings suggested Pacifica could save money by mailing out new ballots in the same package as the general election mailing set to go out in early November. Now that the path is actually cleared to do so, look for Rosenberg to reverse course and try to block or delay the recall, again.

Meanwhile, Rosenberg is currently using her position as Pacifica’s treasurer to try to impose harsh austerity on KPFA. She scuttled a no-cuts budget drafted by KPFA’s local management, and approved by KPFA’s elected Local Station Board (this was after she and her allies walked out of the local board meeting scheduled to discuss the budget.) Despite the fact that KPFA’s currently running a surplus, Rosenberg led the charge to impose line-by-line cuts, including staff cuts, on KPFA. Her legal challenges may have bought her enough time to see that process through to whatever end she has in mind. Rosenberg and her allies have renamed their “Independents for Community Radio” slate as “United for Community Radio” for the 2012 KPFA elections.

The big picture: democracy when?

Rosenberg’s success at delaying her own recall election calls into question the very foundations of Pacifica’s democratic reforms. The recall provisions currently in Pacifica’s bylaws were created as a check on unaccountable boards run amok — like the board that, in 1999, locked out KPFA’s staff and boarded up its studios.

Many KPFA listeners felt similarly betrayed when Rosenberg attacked KPFA’s union, orchestrated the purge of its biggest fundraiser, and hand-picked her own political allies to fill the Morning Show‘s timeslot. But even after KPFA’s listeners gathered more than double the number of signatures needed to trigger a recall, Rosenberg, and Pacifica, have delayed the election for close to a year. Stay tuned for the next step, which we hope to announce soon.

Rosenberg sues over KPFA recall, ballot count delayed

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It’s been almost a year since SaveKPFA submitted over 800 signatures from KPFA listener-members seeking the removal of Pacifica Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg — the architect of Pacifica’s purge of the Morning Show. Against our wishes, and over our repeated protests, Pacifica delayed the recall election past December 31 — which was the date called for in its own rules and bylaws. That bought Rosenberg’s supporters six months to raise money for a “no” campaign mailing.

In a bizarre turn of events, Rosenberg has now sued Pacifica over that very delay. Her legal argument? That the gap between the voter eligibility deadline Pacifica set when it verified the recall petitions, and the date Pacifica actually mailed the ballots, is too long. Her suit asks for the recall election to be thrown out altogether, and asks the judge to make Pacifica pay her attorneys’ fees. Don’t expect Pacifica’s attorneys to defend this one too vigorously…

On August 1, an Alameda County Superior Court judge issued a temporary order to place all recall ballots under seal until a hearing on Rosenberg’s lawsuit, now scheduled for September 10. On August 4, SaveKPFA observers documented the retrieval of recall ballots from a Berkeley PO box, and their sequestration in a nearby safe deposit box. They report what appears to be a VERY LARGE number of ballots waiting to be counted (see photo at above). SaveKPFA offers a few thoughts on these latest developments:

  • Rosenberg could have raised her procedural concerns much sooner — perhaps even before ballots were mailed. The suit doesn’t appear to be the action of someone who wants a smooth election process, but rather that of someone seeking maximum delay.
  • Rosenberg filed the suit just before ballots were to be counted, and sought an order to prevent the counting itself (rather than to prevent Pacifica from acting on whatever the count was). This indicates Rosenberg expected to lose the vote count.
  • Any remedy likely to come from her lawsuit — including an entirely new election — is unlikely to produce a different result. So Rosenberg appears to be playing for time.

Rosenberg told the East Bay Express that the vote was too expensive, but KPFA listener-member Mark Spindler told the Daily Californian that “the question should be why is Pacifica teaming with anti-union attorneys” to use donations to fight listeners and staff. He added that Rosenberg “needs to be held accountable for what she has done, and this recall is the vehicle for that.”

Recall supervisor: not so neutral

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Last week, the supervisor Pacifica hired to run KPFA’s election, Matt Ward, threatened SaveKPFA that he would refuse to send out ballots unless we participated in an on-air debate — on two days’ notice. He also declined to give SaveKPFA any details on the ground rules and format for the debate until just before airtime. Once the debate started, he interrupted SaveKPFA‘s debater three times during her opening statement: telling her she couldn’t discuss the layoff notice KPFA’s union has just received, accusing her of hyperbole, and threatening to take away her time.

Then complaints started coming in from listeners who had called the studio to voice pro-recall positions and were rejected after a call screener asked what they wanted to say. We believe this is the first time KPFA has ever screened calls-ins for content during an election debate. When one pro-recall voice did get on-air — and started to explain why she had stopped supporting Tracy Rosenberg — Ward started interrupting her almost immediately. He let all other callers go on at length. Ironically, Ward had published a rule that KPFA staff members could not participate in the debate — then he let two pro-recall unpaid staffers on the air to speak uninterrupted, even after they identified themselves as staff members.

Then ballots hit mailboxes. Ward had modified the text of SaveKPFA‘s recall petition before printing it in the ballot package: contrary to Pacifica’s own recall procedures, he took out three topic sentences summarizing the charges against Rosenberg, as well as the entire concluding paragraph of the petition. Now the ballot language doesn’t match what over 800 KPFA listeners had signed onto (here’s the original recall petition that listeners signed and the actual ballot that mailed). So much for a fairly-run election!