If you were in Pacifica ED Arlene Engelhardt’s shoes, Carol Spooner asks, “What would you have done?”

I would have agreed to let KPFA spread catch-up payments over three years, instead of one—which would have saved $100,000 (more than the purported savings from laying off the two hosts of the Morning Show).

I would have agreed to start paying rent for the KPFA-owned building that my offices are in—which would have saved KPFA around $30,000/year.

If I absolutely could not give up any money for Pacifica National, then I would have gone back to the bargaining table with KPFA’s union.

I would have taken KPFA’s union members up on their offer to switch Medicare-eligible workers to a cheaper Medicare Advantage health plan that would provide equivalent benefits.

An explanation

I would have explained how much we had left to cut, and asked the union to work with me on across-the board wage or hour cuts that wouldn’t compromise KPFA’s ability to continue fundraising. After all, KPFA’s workers were willing to collectively sacrifice pay to keep John Hamilton on payroll. And it’s not a foreign concept: the nonprofit Carol sits on the board of, Free Speech Radio News, has done across-the-board wage rate cuts to deal with its own shortfalls.

I would have cut my own salary at least 20% as a show of good faith. If I were Arlene Engelhardt, I think I could probably still live comfortably on $72,000/year.

If all else failed, I would explain the situation to KPFA’s listeners, and give them a chance to come up with something.

When SaveKPFA raised $63,000 in pledges to support the return of The Morning Show, I would have gratefully accepted the pledges and reversed the layoffs—on a temporary basis, if nothing else—rather than spending over $60,000 paying management attorneys to defend layoffs I wanted to avoid in the first place.

A different agenda

Of course—that’s me. I’d be interested in keeping good programming on the air, maintaining KPFA’s ability to fund raise, and keeping good faith with the station’s staff and listener-supporters. I would have been pretty motivated to avoid cutting a program that raised one out of every four dollars that come in during fund drives.

I think Arlene, and Carol, had a different agenda. Both had strong differences with those of us working on the show, me in particular. Both probably saw an opportunity to eliminate some political opposition within the station. And both probably didn’t think it would cost that much money.

Carol has for a long time been critical of strip programming (programs produced by the same people every day)—she thinks KPFA has too much of it. She and Arlene both have said they believe that the only reason The Morning Show raised so much money was because it was in a good time slot—not because it was a particularly good program, or the people working on it did a particularly good job. Anything, to her thinking, could perform equally well.

So they put anything on. A patchwork of different hosts every day, largely chosen on the basis of their political allegiances. A structure that didn’t really allow the new program to respond to news developments in a timely fashion—at exactly the time of the day when listeners want breaking news and analysis. According to Carol’s logic, the new program should have performed just as well—or better—than The Morning Show. In fact, the tune-out for that hour was instant, and dramatic.

Then they went through a fund drive. Predictably, fundraising during the 8:AM hour dropped by more than 50%.

Of course, that contradicts Carol’s ideology. So she’s doubled down: blame the people who didn’t want The Morning Show cut in the first place—accuse them of telling people not to give.

That’s cynical.

Go to the web pages of savekpfa.org and kpfaworker.org. Both have been telling people to support KPFA since all the tumult went down six months ago. KPFAworker.org has raised over $13,000 in challenge funds, off-air, to support KPFA’s ailing fund drive.

Look at the pattern of pledges: the drop in fundraising at KPFA hasn’t been across the boards. Donations are up, year-over-year, for The Evening News, for Letters and Politics, for the annual Grateful Dead Marathon. The major drops are during precisely those hours Arlene re-programmed.

Compare it to 7:AM: Democracy Now! is raising only slightly less than The Morning Show did at that hour. The drop off is nowhere near as dramatic as the time slot Arlene replaced with her patchwork. Which suggests, to me, that there is some value to having the consistency of a strip program covering current events in drive time.

But what do I know?

MORE: http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2011/05/24/what-i-wo…

Here’s the biggest: “KPFA was functionally bankrupt as of 9/30/10 ”

According to the Pacifica Foundation’s independent auditor’s report, on 9/30/10, KPFA’s total assets exceeded its total liabilities by $4.3 MILLION DOLLARS — making KPFA the wealthiest station owned by Pacifica.

Borrowing money for two weeks to pay bills represents a temporary liquidity problem, not insolvency. Carol knows the difference, and she has a copy of the auditor’s report — there no excuse for her throwing the word “bankrupt” around. For someone who says she’s concerned alarmism might might hurt the station’s fundraising prospects, this is rank hypocrisy.

Here’s a doozy:
“[Engelhardt] involuntarily laid off hosts Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Aimee Allison and producer Laura Prives. Producer Esther Manilla then chose to take the voluntary severance package so that Laura could stay on.”

1) Esther Manilla put in for a voluntary layoff *before* the Morning Show got axed, not after. (Engelhardt apparently did not know Manilla was one of the people who’d agreed to leave the station when Engelhardt issued layoff notices–which means she didn’t bother to review who had taken voluntary layoffs, what their positions were, and whether she’d need to cover their duties. Axing the Morning Show was the act of someone who had an agenda — not someone carefully weighing her situation.)
2) When Esther Manilla found out her Morning Show colleagues had been laid off, and confronted Engelhardt with the information that Esther herself had already taken a severance package, Esther told Engelhardt that *Brian Edwards-Tiekert* had more seniority than Laura Prives, and he should be re-instated first, per the seniority provisions of the union contract. Engelhardt rejected that. Esther’s account of this interaction is quite public, and posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQCcGa5vBUk
3) The fact that Engelhardt reinstated Laura Prives, without laying off anyone else to zero the cost of the reinstatement, shows that she wasn’t working toward a fixed financial target, she was just making things up as she went along and pursuing a political vendetta against The Morning Show.

Finally, I don’t think Carol actually knows she’s got this one wrong, but it’s illuminating:

“That resulted in 1.55 fte staff laid off involuntarily.”

Aimee Allison and Brian Edwards-Tiekert had both already had their pay cut to 27 hours per week earlier in the year. That adds up to 1.35 FTE., not 1.55 FTE. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s telling. Carol presumably has this number wrong because Engelhardt had the number wrong. Which means she didn’t bother to get good numbers for how much money the layoffs would “save” before she dropped the axe.

Here’s the biggest: “KPFA was functionally bankrupt as of 9/30/10 ”

According to the Pacifica Foundation’s independent auditor’s report, on 9/30/10, KPFA’s total assets exceeded its total liabilities by $4.3 MILLION DOLLARS — making KPFA the wealthiest station owned by Pacifica.

Borrowing money for two weeks to pay bills represents a temporary liquidity problem, not insolvency. Carol knows the difference, and she has a copy of the auditor’s report — there no excuse for her throwing the word “bankrupt” around. For someone who says she’s concerned alarmism might might hurt the station’s fundraising prospects, this is rank hypocrisy.

Here’s a doozy:
“[Engelhardt] involuntarily laid off hosts Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Aimee Allison and producer Laura Prives. Producer Esther Manilla then chose to take the voluntary severance package so that Laura could stay on.”

1) Esther Manilla put in for a voluntary layoff *before* the Morning Show got axed, not after. (Engelhardt apparently did not know Manilla was one of the people who’d agreed to leave the station when Engelhardt issued layoff notices–which means she didn’t bother to review who had taken voluntary layoffs, what their positions were, and whether she’d need to cover their duties. Axing the Morning Show was the act of someone who had an agenda — not someone carefully weighing her situation.)
2) When Esther Manilla found out her Morning Show colleagues had been laid off, and confronted Engelhardt with the information that Esther herself had already taken a severance package, Esther told Engelhardt that *Brian Edwards-Tiekert* had more seniority than Laura Prives, and he should be re-instated first, per the seniority provisions of the union contract. Engelhardt rejected that. Esther’s account of this interaction is quite public, and posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQCcGa5vBUk
3) The fact that Engelhardt reinstated Laura Prives, without laying off anyone else to zero the cost of the reinstatement, shows that she wasn’t working toward a fixed financial target, she was just making things up as she went along and pursuing a political vendetta against The Morning Show.

Finally, I don’t think Carol actually knows she’s got this one wrong, but it’s illuminating:

“That resulted in 1.55 fte staff laid off involuntarily.”

Aimee Allison and Brian Edwards-Tiekert had both already had their pay cut to 27 hours per week earlier in the year. That adds up to 1.35 FTE., not 1.55 FTE. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s telling. Carol presumably has this number wrong because Engelhardt had the number wrong. Which means she didn’t bother to get good numbers for how much money the layoffs would “save” before she dropped the axe.

She says that KPFA was ‘functionally bankrupt’, which is a made up term that can mead whatever anyone wants it to mean. Is a person with a $150,000/yr salary, and $200,000 in the bank but a $500,000 mortgage and a $40,000 car loan functionally bankrupt? Their debts outweigh their assets…

On financial matters, she is selective with her facts, she mentions KPFA borrowing from KPFT for a payroll, but not that A) it was repaid with 4 weeks,
B) Shortly after that, KPFA was directed by Pacifica National to loan WPFW money to cover their payroll. A loan that now in May 2011, 8 months later still has not been repaid. So we were ‘functionally bankrupt’ and yet able to cover others payroll. C) We needed to borrow because Pacifica had used a $150,000 CD of KPFA’s as collateral for a line of credit without telling us, so we couldn’t use that money. This never comes out when Carol Spooner, or Lavarn, or Tracey Rosenberg brings up the point. It doesn’t fit the narrative of financial irresponsibility at KPFA. They neatly avoid the issue of financial irresponsibility at Pacifica National.

Carol says “Painful choices had to be made” and lists the paid staff and asks “what would you have done?” and states “at least one program had to be cancelled”. That is where she is wrong. She was not at those budget meetings. I was. I was at the meetings and side meetings. Several people, including me, came up with a budget that would have avoided any involuntary layoffs. It’s right here. http://www.savekpfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/0…
It was rejected out of hand by the National Board and Arlene refused to support it. They considered job cuts to be the ONLY valid way of saving money.

Carol is right in one thing, The union contract does say that layoffs need not be strictly by seniority. This means that Arlene actively and explicitly choose to cancel the Morning Show, without consulting the KPFA interim GM and Pacifica HR director Ahmad Anderson. She choose to cancel the top fundraising show. The show that made 3x what it cost to produce (those ‘big’ union salaries included), when most shows barely covered their own costs.They replaced it with a quickly put together rotating groups of hosts, without doing any forward publicity.

And having done that, Were they shocked to see listeners complain, cancel their pledges leave in droves (and I had to listen to many of those complaints and process all those cancellations). I will answer in the way that Carol Spooner does and quote her statement to the very same drop in fundraising “If so, They were profoundly stupid”.

Lastly Carol does the mind boggingly rhetorical backflip of chiding the paid staff for not having done more to raise funds.
Earlier in the post, she says “I would have laid off more” (people than Arlene had ), and now she chides those same people, some of which she would have laid off for not doing more. Mitch has raised more since the layoffs than he has ever raised. Brian, who had several weeks severance and vacation pay to cover himself for a job search, fought for his job back and has stated publicly that people should NOT withhold pledges but should pledge because the station is an important resource and has been pitching when ever given the opportunity. His only pitch in the 8am slot of the current drive brought in about $7,000 that hour, more than twice the average. Save KPFA has been pushing people to donate (no such push has come from the other faction). Yet these are the people that Carol suggests she might have laid off. These are the people labeled as disruptive and possibly refereed to as ‘fifth columnist’ with ‘divisive’ agendas.

She claims lies but offers no examples, selectively chooses financial data that serves her point and excludes context that doesn’t, says she would have laid off more people and then accuses those people of sabotaging their own livelihoods.

“But despite all its flaws, KPFA could again become a true beacon – a reality fix, a place to confirm that you are not crazy for not believing in the racist war machine and the economics of empire and consumption and oppression ”
I agree, but not if it’s going to fire and/or disrespect the people who have been doing just that all along.

I would have agreed to let KPFA spread catch-up payments over three years, instead of one — which would have saved $100,000 (more than the purported savings from laying off the two hosts of the Morning Show).

I would have agreed to start paying rent for the KPFA-owned building that my offices are in — which would have saved KPFA around $30,000/year.

If I absolutely could not give up any money for Pacifica National, then I would have gone back to the bargaining table with KPFA’s union.

I would have taken KPFA’s union members up on their offer to switch Medicare-eligible workers to a cheaper Medicare Advantage health plan that would provide equivalent benefits.

I would have explained how much we had left to cut, and asked the union to work with me on across-the board wage or hour cuts that wouldn’t compromise KPFA’s ability to continue fundraising. (After all, KPFA’s workers were willing to collectively sacrifice pay to keep John Hamilton on payroll. And it’s not a foreign concept: the nonprofit Carol sits on the board of, Free Speech Radio News, has done across-the-board wage rate cuts to deal with its own shortfalls).

I would have cut my own salary at least 20% as a show of good faith — If I were Arlene Engelhardt, I think I could probably still live comfortably on $72,000/year.

If all else failed, I would explain the situation to KPFA’s listeners, and give them a chance to come up with something.

Before I cut anyone, I would have figured out what they make, and what the cuts would actually save (Carol has apparently been given exaggerated numbers for how many hours per week the hosts of The Morning Show were working at the time of our layoff–probably by Arlene.)

I would have figured out who had already taken voluntary layoffs, and what duties I needed to fill. (When she pulled the trigger, Arlene didn’t know that Morning Show producer Esther Manilla had already taken a layoff. Apparently, she’s told Carol that Esther took a buyout *after* the elimination of The Morning Show–which is false).

When SaveKPFA raised $63,000 in pledges to support the return of The Morning Show, I would have gratefully accepted the pledges and reversed the layoffs–on a temporary basis, if nothing else–rather than spending over $60,000 paying management attorneys to defend layoffs I wanted to avoid in the first place.

Here’s what I would NOT have done: I would not, one month after layoffs made for purported reasons of financial necessity, have hired a personal friend to work as KPFA’s Program Director for $10,000/year more than budgeted.

Of course — that’s me. I’d be interested in keeping good programming on the air, maintaining KPFA’s ability to fundraise, and keeping good faith with the station’s staff and listener-supporters. I would have been pretty motivated to avoid cutting a program that raised one out of every four dollars that come in during fund drives.

I think Arlene, and Carol, had a different agenda. Both had strong differences with those of us working on the show, me in particular. Both probably saw an opportunity to eliminate some political opposition within the station. And both probably didn’t think it would cost that much money.

Carol has for a long time been critical of strip programming (programs produced by the same people every day) — she thinks KPFA has too much of it. She and Arlene both have said they believe that the only reason The Morning Show raised so much money was because it was in a good timeslot–not because it was a particularly good program, or the people working on it did a particularly good job. Anything, to her thinking, could perform equally well.

So they put anything on. A patchwork of different hosts every day, largely chosen on the basis of their political allegiances. A structure that didn’t really allow the new program to respond to news developments in a timely fashion — at exactly the time of the day when listeners want breaking news and analysis. According to Carol’s logic, the new program should have performed just as well–or better–than The Morning Show. In fact, the tune-out for that hour was instant, and dramatic.

Then they went through a fund drive. Predictably, fundraising during the 8:AM hour dropped by more than 50%.

Of course, that contradicts Carol’s ideology. So she’s doubled down: blame the people who didn’t want the Morning Show cut in the first place — accuse them of telling people not to give.

Bullshit.

Go to the webpages of savekpfa.org and kpfaworker.org. Both have been telling people to support KPFA since all the tumult went down six months ago. KPFAworker.org has raised over $9,000 in challenge funds, off-air, to support KPFA’s ailing fund drive.

Look at the pattern of pledges: the drop in fundraising at KPFA hasn’t been across the boards. Donations are up, year-over-year, for The Evening News, for Letters and Politics, for the annual Grateful Dead Marathon. The major drops are during precisely those hours Arlene re-programmed.