| NEW YORK
- October 22 - As Pacifica Radio's embattled leadership continues to
pay a bevy of high priced lawyers, public relations firms, and security
companies to maintain their tenuous grip on power, basic bills crucial for
operations at the five-station network are not being paid.
Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley now has 125 unpaid and overdue bills
totaling more than $100,000, according to KPFA's afternoon news show
Flashpoints and the http://www.savepacifica.net web site. This includes an
unpaid electrical bill of $9,400 to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). Pacifica
stations KPFK in Los Angeles and WBAI in New York also have many of their
bills unpaid, according to staff at those stations.
"Listener money is being squandered by an inept and self-serving Pacifica
executive leadership," said Juan Gonzalez, the coordinator of the Pacifica
Campaign. "By putting lawyers first, and staff and listeners later, the
present Pacifica management and Board leadership have abrogated their
responsibility as stewards of the oldest listener-sponsored network in the
country. They need to resign immediately."
In Pacifica's FY2000 (Oct. 1-Sept.30), the network spent a staggering
$500,000 of listener money on anti-union law firms and $440,000 more on
security. Dissident Board members estimate this year's legal bills have
already topped one million dollars, including hundreds of thousands paid to
the anti-union law firm of Pacifica Board Secretary John Murdock -- Epstein,
Becker & Green.
Meanwhile, an investigation by the Pacifica Campaign has revealed that as
the network plunged deeper into crisis the past couple of years, executive
salaries skyrocketed.
The network's IRS tax records obtained by the campaign show that the pay of
Pacifica's top brass, including KPFK General Manager Mark Schubb, KPFT
General Manager Garland Ganter, and Executive Director Bessie Wash, climbed
an average of 30 percent in the one year period from 1999 to 2000.
Financial records also show that Pacifica's national administrative office,
which oversees the five-station network, spent a staggering 28 cents out of
every dollar raised by network staff in 2000. In fact, the national office
budget in 2000 exceeded the budgets of four of the five Pacifica stations.
But while the law firms, the growing Pacifica bureaucracy, and the Pacifica
brass are being handsomely rewarded, Pacifica's five stations are suffering.
The financial crisis comes at KPFA despite the fact that the station has
exceeded all on-air fundraising goals for the past two years, and should
show a surplus of more than $200,000 in its accounts. KPFK has also
generated surpluses in the past. But these funds are now being
misappropriated by Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash and the Pacifica
Board leadership.
Wash has reportedly ordered KPFA to undertake an immediate on-air
fundraising drive, and has threatened to send in scab broadcasters to do
on-air fundraising should KPFA staff refuse. At KPFK, the fund drive will
reportedly begin in November, when its transmitter is repaired.
"Why should listeners donate more money to KPFA, or any Pacifica station, if
the money goes directly to Pacifica national executives who then misuse it?"
asked Bernard White, the former program director of Pacifica station WBAI
and now a Pacifica Campaign staffer.
According to IRS Form 990, Los Angeles station manager Mark Schubb's salary
shot up from $56,000 in 1999 to nearly $72,000 in 2000. Chief financial
officer Sandra Rosas's salary hit $75,000 in 2000, up from $58,000 the year
before. (Rosas has since left the network). And the salary of WPFW General
Manager Bessie Wash, who was installed as Pacifica's Executive Director in
March 1999, rose from $55,000 to nearly $75,000 in 2000.
The salary increases came as the very same Pacifica's executives steered the
network into what The Los Angeles Times has called "chaos," marked by
wholesale firings and bannings, union-busting, censorship, and even the
shutdown of Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley for three weeks in the summer
of 1999.
In December 2000, Pacifica executives launched the "Christmas Coup" at WBAI
in New York City, changing all the locks overnight, bringing in security
guards, and firing and banning more than 24 long-time producers and
volunteers.
As a result, WBAI's audience ratings have dropped dramatically and so has
its on-air fundraising. WBAI used to the largest fundraiser in the network,
bringing in anywhere between $800,000 and a one million dollars per drive.
But in 2001, its drives have brought no more than $300,000-$400,000,
according to staff at the station.
With the crisis, expenses at Pacifica's bloated national bureaucracy in
Washington, DC, have skyrocketed. The national office spent some $3 million
out of a total budget of $10.8 million in FY2000, roughly the same budget as
Pacifica's then largest station, WBAI in New York City.
These expenses are expected to have sharply increased over the past year.
This summer, the network fired its old lead law firm and hired some of the
most expensive and influential Beltway consultants and lawyers. These
include President Clinton's impeachment trial lawyer, Greg Craig of Williams
& Connolly, and the PR firm of Westhill Partners, whose clients have
included tobacco giants and alleged war criminals.
Figures for Pacifica FY2001, which just ended in September, have not yet
been released.
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