Justice Fatigue in the Morning at KPFA

the KPFA Wars have worn me down, and I'm not even a partisan in the battles. I don't even listen to the station.

I'm really, really tired of every other post on this site being about KPFA. how about the KPFA warriors start a "KPFA Wars" blog and have it out there? will there ever come a day when not every third post on indybay is about some self-righteous KPFA faction jockeying for position or advantage, or maligning the Great Satans on the other sides of the dispute? I'm losing hope that day will ever come

it's little wonder donations have dropped so much over the last three years. soon no one will care and KPFA warriors can pride themselves on having devoured the station from within

You may want to note, that the donation isn't actually missing. All $375,000 are at the San Francisco Foundation being administered as it's supposed to be.
Also whenever the subject comes up, no one ever mentions that Pacifica Foundation had an identical $375,000 from the same donor and spent it already.

The $375,000 check that Lemlem sat on for a year was originally going straight to KPFA. Now folks have to beg to get the SF Foundation to get it for the station. So in some ways it is lost in terms of day to day control of the $375,000.

Two checks were given by an estate, one to Pacifica, one to KPFA. The explicit conditions of the bequests were that endowments were to be set-up with the money. The principle could never be spent, only the endowment interest could be spent.

Pacifica ignored that and spent down its check like a drunken sailor. They also wanted to spend KPFA's check.

Thankfully, KPFA still has its endowment, while Pacifica had to send their money back for violating the terms of the gift. KPFA then got charged by Pacifca for some of this money that Pacifica had to return, by the way.

Pacifica is grossly incompetent and negligent, and then Pacifica supporters have the nerve to try to say KPFA did something wrong!?!? Would be shocking if it wasn't so predictable.

There were 2 halves of the endowment (the sale of a house in the Berkeley hills, I believe). One half went to KPFA directly. That is the half that sat in a desk drawer for 14 months until the check expired - the drawer was that of the former manager Lemlem Rijio. An auditor, Helin Donovan LLC, discovered at the end of 2009 that the check, which KPFA's Business manager reported as being in a money market to Pacifica, had never been deposited into that money market account or any bank account. Rijio came up with the uncashed check, reporting that she had "left it in her desk drawer" since October of 2008. The donor, a bit disgusted as you might expect, agreed to replace the funds if they were held in trust for KPFA by the San Francisco Foundation.

The half of the check that was granted to the Pacifica Foundation WAS promptly deposited in the bank in October of 2008 and used shortly afterwards to pay back a line of credit. This transaction returned $200,000 of cash reserve funds to KPFA for liquid use in August of 2009 (now spent as part of the million dollar reserve that vanished in the past two years).

All 5 stations are making monthly payments to restore the principal to the foundation at the request of the donor.

"But, we can't be out of money...

...there's still a check left in the drawer!"

Up until around the end of 2008, the KPFA entrenched staff faction / Concerned Listeners (now 'SaveKPFA') and their allies at other stations controlled Pacifica, so anything the foundation did wrong before then -- and they did a hell of a lot wrong -- is on their bill.

This faction, by the way, did nothing against Pacifica when it was controlled by the Democratic Party corporate hijackers throughout the 1990's, while those hijackers carried out massive purges at KPFA. They only have developed an antipathy to Pacifica since it was taken over by elected representatives -- mainly of listeners and unpaid, volunteer staff -- who are not supporters of their faction.

So ironic, yet so typical, that you would write that I am "making things up" in your headline, at the same time your post confirms exactly what I said. Pacifica did not honor the terms of the bequest and therefore lost its endowment. Paciifca bills KPFA and the other stations for Pacifica's own blatant disregard of the terms of the gift. Meanwhile, KPFA still has its endowment generating money for KPFA.

The current leadership at Pacifica does not honor terms of endowments. It does not honor union contracts. And, as we saw in the attempt to manipulate the staff election, it either doesn't know about or care about California law governing corporations. The current leadership of Pacifica, therefore, is a grave threat to the survival of KPFA -- and Pacifica itself -- and must be removed.

Neither Arlene Engelhardt nor LaVarne Williams mention the "check in a drawer" theory in their polemics; strange, when you consider the trust is to paint managment and SaveKPFA as irresponsible fiduciaries.

This omission seems to be explained by An Unpaid Staffer's revelation.

Let's try this again:

KPFA's share of the money sat as a check in a drawer uncashed for 14 months, 8 months after the expiration date of the check. KPFA's bookkeeper reported the money as deposited to a bank account when the check was never deposited. During an audit, the auditor from Helin Donovan discovered the bank account in question did not have the funds in it that it was reported to have by KPFA's bookkeeper. KPFA's then-manager was ordered to produce the funds and came up with the now 14-month old worthless uncashed check for $375,000 which she said had been sitting in her desk for over a year and she had forgotten it was there.

The donor reluctantly replaced the check but insisted the funds be held in trust and not given to KPFA to lose again.

The negligent party is KPFA. That is why they do not have access to their own funds.

Pacifica, by contrast, deposited its check, used it to pay outstanding obligations from all five stations it oversees (Pacifica's bills are the station's bills for insurance, auditing, and DN programming fees) and then embarked on a payment plan to rebuild the asset for the foundation.

Pacifica retains control of its funds. KPFA did not. Donor's judgement call.

"Pacifica, by contrast, deposited its check, used it to pay outstanding obligations from all five stations it oversees [...] and then embarked on a payment plan to rebuild the asset for the foundation."

What this means, as I understand it from other sources, is that Pacifica was allowed, due to special circumstances, to borrow from the restricted endowment, use it for purposes or in ways that did not conform to the restrictions, and then pay it back with interest into the restricted endowment. It may be that the restriction is that only the interest, not the endowment itself, can be spent, but I'm not sure of this.

In any case, there was no mismanagement by Pacifica in this matter. There would not, in fact, have been any need for the special arrangement if not for the serious mismanagement of finances by Pacifica, KPFA and, especially, WBAI when they were all controlled by the Concerned Listeners (now 'SaveKPFA') and their allies in New York and elsewhere.

Some of the relevant information can be found in the CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER REPORT to the PACIFICA NATIONAL BOARD MEETING in July 2009:
http://pacifica.org/documents/iCFO_Report_July_2009.htm
(I'm pretty sure the CFO who made the report was LaVarn Williams, although her name is not included in the posted text.)

There are hundreds of articles on indybay I don't have time to read.

A comment such as the one that crabs on about "kpfa wars" is just there to wear people down. If you're tired of stories by people concerned about the last progressive radio network in the country, skip the articles, stupid!

This video is ridiculous - and I don't mean in a good satirical way.

Talk about selective editing (not just of Krasny's show but of the fact that not many people turned out to that protest).

If you actually want to hear what was discussed on Krasney's Forum (KQED) about KPFA, the link is right here: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201011100931

There were more people at the Save Hard Knock protest than at any CWA protest. Average age was about 30 years younger too.