Sacramento State says that it doesn’t support Capital Public Radio hiring a new general manager and will not fund the position, following a vote from the station’s board Tuesday evening to move forward with the process.
The university’s refusal comes as the president of Sac State’s student body this week called for members of the station’s board of directors to resign after an audit showed years of financial mismanagement at the station, which is an auxiliary of Sacramento State. The university is the FCC license holder for CapRadio.
CapRadio’s board met Tuesday evening, though the meeting was closed to the public due to discussion of “personnel and related matters.” In an email later that night, Sac State said the board voted to “move forward in hiring a new general manager at the cost of nearly half a million dollars a year,” and that it did not support the decision and wouldn’t fund the position.
“With the serious issues of accountability, financial processes and controls, and fiscal instability highlighted in the CSU audit, the board still decided to move forward with the hiring, despite the University’s request not to do so,” the university wrote in the statement.
“The student board representative, who is also the student body president, asked officers and members of the finance committee to resign, but no resignations have been confirmed,” the statement continues. “As a public institution, we believe in transparency and accountability. We also believe in saving CapRadio. The board has the right to hire a general manager, notwithstanding, the University, as CapRadio’s fiduciary in light of their ill financial health, does not support this decision and will not fund this hire.”
When asked for comment on the university's statement, Shirlee Tully, chief brand and development officer for CapRadio, replied in an email that “The board won’t comment on anything that occurs during a closed session as a matter of policy.”
In a video released Friday evening, Sac State President Luke Wood said that Sac State’s internal analysis projected that CapRadio “will likely have no remaining financial resources by January.”
On Monday evening, Nataly Andrade-Dominguez, the president of the Sac State Associated Students, Inc. called on the officers and finance committee of the CapRadio board to resign in a letter to the student-run State Hornet news service.
As ASI president, Andrade-Dominguez has been the student representative to the CapRadio board for the past three months. ASI is also a campus auxiliary, of which Andrade-Dominguez is the president.
She said that her experience with the CapRadio board “did not sit well,” including not properly notifying the public of agendas in advance or whether meetings would take place in person or remotely.
When the audit was released, Andrade-Dominguez said she was “shocked.”
“My own campus auxiliary just had our audit. And it was completely clean — and it's been for years. So seeing the comparison — and how we follow very strictly the CSU policies and how we need to do things, and then seeing how bad it got at CPR — that raised a red flag for me as a new board member.
“As I read the audit and I continued to hear things, the reaction of the board, it was just all red flags that were occurring to me,” she said. “And as someone who knows and has been in those positions, I knew that I had to say something before it got worse.”
Following the audit, Sac State said it would move operational and financial management under university supervision. Jonathan Bowman, Sac State’s CFO and vice president for Administration and Business Affairs, was appointed as “administrator in charge to CapRadio” by Wood on Saturday.
Sac State said as a nonprofit auxiliary, CapRadio cannot file for bankruptcy, and any debt accumulated is the ultimate responsibility of the university, its fiduciary. Wood said in a video released Friday that CapRadio’s financial problems would not impact the university's day-to-day operations.
A position profile for the president and general manager position listed the salary range as “$250,000 to $325,000, commensurate with experience, plus a full benefits package.” Jun Reina, the station’s previous general manager, reported $280,112 in salary and other compensation in the station’s 2021 fiscal year filing.
The CapRadio board announced in March it would start a search to replace Reina, who would stay on until a successor could be found, but Reina left the station in June.
Reina had been in the position since 2020 following the retirement of Rick Eytcheson, who had served as general manager since 2006. Eytcheson stayed on as president emeritus until June 30, 2023.
Last week, Sac State said that it has commissioned a “forensic examination to determine the origins and causes” of CapRadio’s operational and financial problems.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by News Editor Chris Hagan and edited by Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez and Digital Editor Claire Morgan. Senior Producer Drew Sandsor edited content for CapRadio newscasts. Following NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no CapRadio corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Rick Eytcheson's name. It has since been updated.
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