The audit includes requests for documents that encompass many of the organization’s financial and governance records. Pacifica has until Feb. 17 to provide the attorney general with the documents, according to Margy Wilkinson, the network’s national board chair and interim executive director.
The audit comes after a year of controversy, in which Pacifica’s former executive director Summer Reese was fired and occupied the national headquarters for about two months and a coalition of national board members launched unsuccessful legal action against the termination. Although Reese’s supporters alleged that she was fired due to discrimination, some members of the board cited her mismanagement of the organization as reason for the dismissal.
The audit follows a complaint made in March by eight former board members to the California attorney general. The complaint outlines concerns about the organization’s recent hiring and firings, bookkeeping and accountability, including an allegation that Reese was fired at a board meeting without advance notice or all members being present.
However, the attorney general’s office did not disclose why it initiated the audit.
The "majority" that ousted Reese is not lawful. One member of that ruling faction clings to a seat on the board, despite the Pacifica bylaws (art. 5, § 1, ¶ B) under which he has resigned because he simultaneously serves as a commissioner on Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1B of the District of Columbia.
ReplyDeleteAnother de facto director, also a member of that faction, has drug convictions. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse (part of the "war on drugs," like it or not), he clings to a seat on the board, jeopardizing the issuance of all licenses and permits from the FCC to Pacifica, which could not continue broadcasting any full-scale radio without him. And that de facto director has a fiduciary duty to be loyal to Pacifica! (How can he be loyal when his very presence on the board jeopardizes Pacifica's nonprofit mission?)
(How can a lawful vote be cast by a director of a corporation who, under its own bylaws, has resigned? Or by a director who defrauds the corporation to which he has a legal duty to be loyal, even jeopardizing its nonprofit mission by his continued presence on the board?)