What do taxpayers provide, of WFCR's support?
The colored section below, "Taxpayers provide 44 percent of WFCR's support" was sent to Fran Goodwin of WFCR for comment. She sent back a crucial piece of information about the UMass funds going to WFCR, saying,
"Salaries are not paid by UMass. Pay checks are generated by the university but the money to cover all salary and benefit expenses comes from revenue raised by the station. We raise the revenue and deposit it into our account at the University. All salary related expenses are paid out of that account. Taxpayer money is not used to pay WFCR salaries."
So the statement in the financial report provided by WFCR, which says,
"The University of Massachusetts, through the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, provides group insurance, workers' compensation, and pension benefits"
(and other things) is, we believe, quite misleading, and it has led to our interpretation below, calculating that 44 percent of WFCR's support comes from taxpayers. A fresh calculation shows the taxpayer's contribution to be only 21.5 percent. (CPB and UMass in-kind $) This does not count, however, services from the Town of Amherst, nor the pension benefits which are paid by the state (or so it says in the financial statement.)
Although the calculations below (left here so you can see them) were based on the misleading statement in the financial report, and are retracted, our comments below stand. It is not so much the percentage which is important, it is the principle that if taxpayers support the station, it does not seem reasonable to forbid the Public a voice.
Although taxpayers provide a substantial degree of support, taxpayers have no voice, even advisory, in the operation of the station. We have suggested a Community Advisory Board (CAB), but the station is totally unresponsive to this suggestion. The station has two advisory committees but neither is remotely the equivalent of a CAB as specified by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (See why we say this.)
The station casts the attempt to get a CAB as an infringement on the station's "free speech" rights, apparently believing that even hearing advice from a public advisory board is unacceptable.
We ask, does the taxpayers' very substantial support of the station entitle the public to anything?
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(now retracted): We think it is not well known that 44 percent of WFCR's support comes from taxpayers. And yet the station is resolutely resisting setting up a Community Advisory Board, recommended by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to provide a way for the Public to have input into the station's programming and operations. All of the data below come from the "WFCR and Friends of WFCR, Inc, Combined Financial Statements" which is available on the WFCR website. In the "support and revenues" section on page 3 we find that:
What is not shown in this "support and revenues" page is the fact that the salaries and benefits for WFCR employees are paid by the University of Massachusettts (that is, by taxpayers.) Elsewhere in the report (page 13, paragraph 14) we find that the University pays roughly $1,124,600 for salaries and $330,700 for workers' compensation, group insurance, and pension benefits. This totals $1,455,300. A more exact total is on page 15, "salaries, wages, and benefits" - $1,455,279. For some reason this substantial number is omitted from the "support and revenues" page. Why, we wonder? It certainly is valuable support, since if WFCR were not part of UMass these salaries would have to be raised some other way. So, to calculate the TOTAL "support and revenues" we add THEIR number, $ 3,555,328 (which omits the salaries, etc.) to the UMass "salaries, wages, and benefits" number, $1,455,279, to get OUR total, $ 5,010,607. This seems a more reasonable number for total support. Total taxpayer support for the station:
This is 44.26 percent of the $5 million total support received by the station. |