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Failure to renew the General Manager's contract
Failure to renew the General Manager's contract
Probably the most famous failing of the Board of Trustees was their decision to dismiss long-time station manager Jenny Wong by not renewing her contract. In July, the board eliminated the GM position and created a new position to focus more on station development and less on managerial duties. This position will be temporarily unpaid. And it's currently unfilled, leaving KOOP without professional management since August 1. Further still, many believe that it's highly unlikely that the board will find anyone to perform a major management job for free.
Jenny Wong had been KOOP's General Manager (GM) since July 1993 -- a year and a half before the station even went on the air. In fact, Jenny is the only GM that KOOP has ever had. She worked in the early days without pay, and even in more recent times as one of two paid staff members, she was paid well below market value, earning less than $20k for a 30-hr. week.
Many people feel that Jenny has been the embodiment of the heart and soul of KOOP. When members suspected that the BoT would try to get rid of her, 42 members attended the July 1998 board meeting to speak in her defense. Only three non-board members spoke negatively, and two of those three were, predictably, Paul Odekirk and Eduardo Vera. Did it give the board pause that they were considering a course of action that the volunteer members were nearly unanimously against? No. It was a similar situation at the next stationwide meeting. Large numbers spoke in favor of the GM, with only a tiny handful speaking against. Despite these numbers, the board voted in July to not renew the General Manager's contract.
Jim Ellinger, who founded KOOP, had this to say: "KOOP was my idea, but she built it. For her to be run off like this is terribly embarrassing. She earned the respect of virtually all the programmers she worked with. She took KOOP from a good idea to reality and was dumped without so much as a thank you."
As the Austin Chronicle put it: "For programmers supportive of the popular [Jenny] Wong, [the board's] criticism was seen as one more arrogant power play by the board, not to mention a lack of gratitude for someone who had toiled under difficult conditions while making sure that no checks bounced and the station never went off the air, while the station still owed her back pay."
The only tangible charge against Jenny was financial mismanagement. But even that charge doesn't hold water. Paul Odekirk told the Austin Chronicle that "When we looked at the bank accounts, Donelle found that there were thousands less than what was on the books." But, as the Chronicle reported, "Donelle McKaskle [an accountant brought in to examine KOOP's finances] doesn't back up Odekirk's claim that the books were thousands of dollars short..."
Jenny had this response: "An objective audit will show the station in good standing financially... Few organizations can report that they have increased their revenues by 400 percent while decreasing debts by 35 percent during their start-up phase. The bank account did not go unbalanced for a year. Here, the board misunderstands the difference between a limitation in accounting software and old-fashioned manual tracking. The books have been managed consistently until the assistant general manager left without a replacement due to a board decision. Despite these irregularities, KOOP has never bounced a check and has maintained excellent relationships with all the station's creditors."
It's also worth pointing out that the board's interference with the hiring of a new Assistant Manager left KOOP without an Asst. Manager for several months, which made it impossible for Jenny to do all the work -- including the financial work -- by herself during that time.
Beyond the fact that most volunteer members think it was a very bad move to get rid of Jenny, there is ALSO a serious issue in the way in which the dismissal was handled. Jenny was removed immediately after her performance evaluation -- without being afforded the opportunity to address any of the items raised in the review.
Here's an article from the Austin Chronicle about Jenny's dismissal, and her letter to the editor defending her record in the following issue.
Below are comments about this issue from John Duncan, KOOP's former Assistant Manager.
Subject: Jenny's review Date: 06/18/98 From: John H. Duncan, jduncan@io.com To: friends-of-koop@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
For the Board to schedule (what I believe to be) Jenny's first evaluation (from the current Board) immediately before they review her contract is so egregious I'm having trouble finding the right words for it - "beyond the pale" comes to mind. If the Board has not evaluated her and then decides not to renew her contract then what do they have to base their decision on? A Board has to make it clear what they want the G.M. to work on before they decide not to renew the G.M.'s contract for whatever reason. The best format for this kind of direction is an evaluation and the evaluation should be on a very strict timeline. Otherwise it smacks of of a political maneuver or at best gross negligence. The supervision of the G.M. is one of the top responsibilities of a Board of Trustees - if the current Board fails at this then we need to look for some new Board members. Any takers? ... Isn't it ironic that this constitutes unfair treatment of an employee? Managers at defense contractors probably get better treatment than this.
Subject: Re: BoT Agenda Date: 06/27/98 From: John H. Duncan, jduncan@io.com To: friends-of-koop@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
To expect a volunteer Board to be professional is perhaps unrealistic but the current conduct of the Board and the Community Board is so far from professional it's outrageous.
To begin with, it is a common understanding that one of the most important duties of a Board of Directors is to hire & fire the General Manager. Not only is the Board showing us how not to supervise the G.M. but they're also showing us how not to hire & fire one. Unlike Rob Patterson, I do not think that this is a Machiavellian plot against the G.M. (although I'm sure the BoT would like to dismiss Jenny if they could), I simply believe that the individuals involved are not qualified to serve on the KOOP Board of Trustees or any other Board of Directors. These individuals are better suited to pursue their own agendas through their programming at KOOP - most of the BoT & CB members have done important work as programmers (some are not programmers). To pursue anything less than the basic interest of the station is a breach of their fiduciary duty as a Board members that are accountable to the membership. For KOOP to operate under such a confrontational relationship between the BoT and the G.M. is not in the basic interest of the station. Period. This Board has failed completely in this respect.
When Community Board members take potshots in public at the G.M. at a Board meeting it reinforces the criticism that the CB acts without parameters and without accountability - it is not their job to evaluate the G.M. This is not leadership and it certainly isn't keeping us in a good working relationship with the community - these petty issues made their way to last weeks Chronicle and since our two-board structure is so confusing the journalist assumed that it was the BoT members that were making the remarks. As if the BoT was conducting some half-baked on-the-fly evaluation right there at the meeting. In terms of the criticism it's obvious that financial records are important but without staff and without an iota of help from the Board or CB it's practically impossible to do so under the circumstances. Has the BoT or CB ever recruited a retired accountant to help get KOOP's books in line? To add insult to injury the Board members and programmers (Gerald Thomason) that are making these comments were nowhere to be seen while I was at KOOP desperately trying to just reconcile the checkbook (much less looking into how to prepare a balance sheet for the station). True, Odekirk has hundreds of volunteer hours. It's also true that each and everyone of those hours have been dedicated to his own self-absorbed projects at KOOP (some projects, like the Pacifica debacle, only served to distract the BoT and leave us without any quality daily news). When Pacifica was pulled off the air during a pledge drive it was clear to me that the BoT and the CB do not have a lick of business sense amongst the entire group.
Subject: Jenny's contract Date: 07/13/98 From: John H. Duncan, jduncan@io.com To: friends-of-koop@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
The agenda [of tonight's board meeting] was fairly short with an executive session regarding Jenny's contract tacked on during "agenda review" which happened around 7:15 (i.e. the executive session was not posted on the agenda prior to the meeting) - this session would be at the end of the agenda. There would be a period for input on the agenda prior to executive session.
During the period for input various people spoke in favor of Jenny. The most notable were several leaders from the Asian community that turned out for the meeting. Paul Odekirk embarrassed us all by questioning the credibility of their testimony by asking one of the leaders, in a derogatory tone, what his involvement with KOOP had been up until this point. It was so bad that Eduardo had to apologize for Paul's line of questioning. Paul followed suit and apologized as well. I wanted to crawl into the elevator shaft and deny that I'd ever spent on hour on the air at KOOP. Barry George spoke up about the manner in which the Board delivered their comments at the meeting, there wasn't even a band practicing downstairs and we still couldn't hear them; he also noted that it was egregious for the Board not to give the G.M. six months to respond to any evaluation. I myself repeated my dry and boring complaints regarding the lack of process that the Board has carried out in its decision making. No executive session was posted, the process of the evaluation has been poorly handled (we've never had a timeline that would tell us when the decision would be made), and how this all points to a lack of leadership at the station. Everyone yawned and Teresa responded that the point was well taken and that the BoT is going to work on this with the Non-Profit center. Lupe spoke in favor of Jenny and all the hard work she's done and when she started to cry I almost cried myself.
Nevertheless, the Board came out of executive session and announced the following:
- they were not going to renew Jenny's contract.
- instead, they planned to create a new position that focused more on "development," "expanding resources" and money. Whether this is a General Manager or not I don't know.
- it would be an open position and Jenny was free to apply for it.
- the Board was looking into recruiting two volunteers with management skills to fill in during the interim after Jenny's contract is up.
- Ellen Stader asked how she fit into this deal and I can't remember Teresa's response but when I asked Teresa if the volunteers would be managing paid staff (i.e. Ellen), Teresa responded that the Board did not foresee that.
- when I asked for a timeline on this whole procedure Teresa did not have one but said that the BoT is going to meet next Monday for a work session and will discuss this.