KPFA Paid Staff Rallies

Most of the listeners to KPFA can hardly wait for the Pacifica National Board to finally do its duty in saving KPFA by laying off the entire staff supporters of the Thug Hallinan Gang. Here is the truth about the finances of KPFA:
From: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/11/05/18663259.php
and
http://www.voteindyradio.org/node/24
It's not surprising that the prospect of budget cuts and staff layoffs has evoked deep concern, even anger, among KPFA employees and listeners, but we can't let emotions and heated rhetoric obscure the fundamental facts of the situation. The station must reduce its staff headcount for one sad but simple reason: /there is no money to continue paying all current employees/, there are no reserves to cover the shortfall, and there's no possibility of making it up by cutting other expenses.

KPFA is in this situation because for several years it has spent more money than it raised. In fiscal year 2010, which just ended, the station had revenues of $3.49 million, but expenses of $4.01 million, leaving a net loss of more than half a million dollars. The year before, in fiscal 2009, the net loss was even larger. The budgets approved by the Local Station Board and the Pacifica National Board for these years called for reducing expenses to trim these losses, but KPFA management largely ignored these mandates and made only minimal cuts. As of Sept. 1, 2010, our station had the largest payroll and the largest deficit in the Pacifica network.

The station was able to survive only by drawing down its financial reserves, then by suspending the payments all Pacifica stations owe to the national Pacifica Foundation for Democracy Now and other central services, and, most recently, by borrowing from the Pacifica station in Houston to cover the September payroll.

These options are no longer available. The reserves, which exceeded $1 million just a few years ago, have all been spent. The Pacifica Foundation can't survive if KPFA doesn't pay its dues (including its deficit from last year). And the other Pacifica stations have neither the money nor the motivation to subsidize our profligate spending.

So balancing the budget is not a matter of choice. And because salaries and benefits constitute the majority of the budget, and most of the other expenses are fixed costs that can't be cut, the only way to balance budget is to reduce the paid staff. And unfortunately, because expenses are so far out of line with revenues, the cuts have to be pretty drastic.

*The Alleged "Purge Plot"*

In the final days of the just-concluded LSB election, several KPFA hosts associated with the former Concerned Listeners group, now calling themselves SaveKPFA, took to the air with dramatic charges that three members of the LSB who also serve on the Pacifica National Board - a thinly veiled reference to – Tracy Rosenberg, Joe Wanzala, and Shahram Aghamir – were plotting to use the budget crisis as a cover for a purge of their political opponents on the station staff. Here's what /really/ happened:

KPFA's fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. Management is supposed to draft a budget and present it to the LSB for approval in August at the latest. But as of mid-September of this year, despite the critical financial situation, KPFA's interim management had not produced even a draft of a budget. At that point, Pacifica's Executive Director, Arlene Engelhardt, stepped in to move the process forward. She invited management, the station's PNB reps (including both ICR and SaveKPFA members), and others to a series of meetings to discuss ways the budget could be balanced.

At these meetings, which for obvious reasons were supposed to be confidential, a wide variety of options were tossed around; inevitably, they included discussion of which staff members would have to be laid off and how these cuts would effect programming. The PNB members from the ICR (SaveKPFA's Andrea Turner didn't attend) noted that under the labor contract between KPFA and the union that represents paid staff (Communications Workers of America, Local 9415), seniority is supposed to be the primary criterion, after taking account of differences in skills and job performance, when layoffs are required.

In other words, the "secret meetings" were actually convened by Pacifica's ED, in fulfillment of her duties, and the supposed "hit list" was really the union seniority chart.

The upshot of the meeting was that the ED reaffirmed that KPFA's FY2011 budget must be balanced, and that in order to achieve that goal, salaries and related expenses have to be cut to a total of $1.75 million, down from $2.3 million in FY2010. Details about exactly who will be cut have not been announced, but after hearing from the ED about her plans in executive session on Oct. 3, the Pacifica National Board /unanimously/ (i.e., with support from all factions) adopted the following resolution: "The PNB fully supports the Pacifica Executive Director in the difficult task of balancing the KPFA budget utilizing the staff cuts recommended by the executive director in accordance with principles she has enunciated, of respect for seniority, recognition of skill sets and maintaining the programming grid to the extent possible."
******
Here are the staff supporters:
C.S. Soong, Co-host, “Against the Grain”
Mitch Jeserich, “Letters to Washington,” Producer & Host
Brian Edwards-Tiekert, “Morning Show,” Producer and Host
Mark Mericle, Co-Director, “KPFA News”
Aileen Alfandary, Co-Director, “KPFA News”
Bonnie Simmons, Host, “The Bonnie Simmons Show,” former KPFA LSB, Pacifica National Board
Philip Maldari, “Sunday Show,” Producer & Host
Kris Welch, “Living Room” & “Saturday Morning Talkies,” Producer & Host
Miguel Guerrero, Web Producer & Producer, “Rock and Rebellion”
Jan Etre, Crafts Fair Coordinator
Laura Prives, “Morning Show,” Executive Producer
Sasha Lilley, “Against the Grain,” Producer & Host
Max Pringle, News Reporter
John Hamilton, News Producer & Anchor
Rose Ketabchi, “Free Speech Radio News,” Technical Producer, KPFA News Co-Anchor
Scott Pham, “Free Speech Radio News,” Technical Producer
Derk Richardson, Host of the “Hear and Now”
David Gans, Host of “Dead To The World”
Bob Baldock, KPFA Events Coordinator

And here is why they are called the Thug Hallinan Gang:
Here is the video:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/09/23/18659685.php
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjBqU7F_m9s
Also see:
http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/
http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/2010/03/intimidation-between-minutes.html
http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/2010/08/siegel-youre-suing-me.html
http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/2010/07/insights-experiences-on-kpfa-board.html
http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/2010/06/save-kpfa.html

And in place of the Wellstone Democratic Club/Save KPFA/Slave KPFA/Concerned Listeners/Thug Hallinan Gang's Democratic Party electioneering all day long, we could have:

Volunteer community news bureaus in the entire 50-mile radius of the San Francisco Bay Area. The 6 p.m. news can be cut to 1/2 hour, Democracy Now can be moved to 7 a.m. for one hour on the radio with no repeats as it is on the Internet in TV, audio and print format already, a Black liberation news and culture show should be every morning at either 6 a.m. or 8 a.m. for 1 hour (or another time slot if they prefer), and a volunteer labor news and culture hour should replace the Sunday Morning 9 a.m. show, and if there are enough volunteers, also have a half hour from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., we could have other programming currently not on KPFA because the entrenched staff refuses to make room for new programs. Certainly, the various senior organizations in the Bay Area could fill the 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. hour with news and information of concern to retired people, not the least of which is the Democrat-Republican attacks on Medicare, Social Security, and the whole private medical insurance crisis in this country that makes the US 49th in life expectancy, putting us behind both the entire industrialized world and some of the non-industrialized world. It could also be filled on a rotating basis with community news from Santa Clara County, San Mateo County (the San Bruno fire story could be expanded to include the whole horror of a private profit utility being in charge of our gas and electricity), Sonoma County and beyond, all areas not heavily covered on KPFA, as they should be, thus bringing more support to KPFA and more information to the listeners.

Similar events have been happening with increasing frequency since election year 2001, unfortunately, I've been out of range recently.

Is there a way to involve more volunteers and inpmrove the training programs?
I do know that media training is a growing budget item for VISTA, included in the recent stimulus package.

If the landmark station of the West Coast can hang on long enough or best hope is a new wave of well trained volunteers, trained with government funds, the best possible use of tax money to enable citizen control of the media.

Regretably, I don't understand all the issues of the moment. That's why I'll read the rest of the posts.
Wish there was more text, but thanks for the video, especially since it's QT and not flash -:)

In the above comment, I meant election year 2000 - a hostile takeover attempt tried to force Amy Goodman off her own show in the run up to Bush's takeover of the US. Similar things happened just prior to his father's candidacy.

True, there are pressures that are solely economic - but even those are ultimately political.

All public broadcasting needs and deserves generous public funding.
It is the best possible way to spend tax dollars.