On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 06:56:59PM +0000, horst wrote: > >People involved now and before (with efn as well) insist that there's no > >reason to point fingers, but I knew this was a likely outcome a year and a > >half ago when I served on the board. I knew then about book keeping that > >may even be criminal, but the proof was covered up by certain board > >members until efn's former general manager stepped down. What followed > >has been a downward spiral for both organizations, each reducing the > >chance for recovery. > > I find above paragraph revealing and disturbing: > > a) [everybody involved] "knew" / Really? --Except the EFN members and > supporters!
I'm primarily referring to board members. And I didn't say that they all knew--but the one board trusted the figures of its GM without an audit, and the other board trusted the figures of the first. The people whose job it was to be following the money trails didn't do so, and nobody forced the GM to produce hard figures. (Always promised next month.) When I demanded access to them, I was first given the runaround by Philip Bayles for a couple of months and then directly told that I had no right to ask for access to the financial data by Paul Harrison when I didn't let the issue drop. I wonder sometimes if the IRS wants to know these things. This was the last straw. As I was poised to leave the board, the GM made a remarkable announcement, and I stayed on just long enough to provide my vote if needed to recall the efn board to have him fired for threatening to destroy OPN. It nearly came to that, too. You'll never find my requests for access to the financials or call for an audit in the minutes, though, that detail was left out by the one writing the minutes. She apparently liked her job and knew who not to offend by including things the council shouldn't read. I wonder if the IRS wants to know about instances of that as well. Furthermore, upon discovery of the gross nelgigence of the former GM, word of how bad it was never reached the OPN council, though I know it did reach members of both boards. Considering that former employees witnessed suspicious last-minute changes and corrections (and uncorrections) to the efn books around the time financial reports were printed, and that this information was known to members of the OPN board, you would have expected an audit and criminal investigation of the GM. I wonder if the IRS would like to know this. All of this happened in just a few short months while I was on the OPN board. There are other things that happened after I left OPN that I know about only second or third hand, but I know who who primary sources are, and although the organizations were both steeped in rumours, they have usually panned out to be true, in my experience. If staff felt they could safely report some of these things without retalliation from either or both boards, publicly, maybe something could have been done. The efn employees were facing an orchastrated attempt to systematically replace them all, along with other threats. > Quiet frankly, I felt tricked and mislead after I had donated at the > fundraiser earlier this year, and then just a few weeks later the > bombshell exploded. I don't blame you. I never contributed a huge amount, but I never had much to contribute. Perhaps $100 total in the span of several months--five here, ten there. I trusted people when I should not have. > b) Turning a blind eye, and keeping quiet is the attitude that fostered > the large corporate scandals we have been seeing. I am not suggesting to > put the EFN/OPN collapse into the same category -- it's the attitude of > 'knowing and remaining silent' what I am talking about. I was anything but silent. Nobody listened. Only had I brought out proof would there have been an investigation, and even then I expect it would have been only to determine which staff members at either organization were in a position to see this, and to report it to an "outsider". If any charges were filed, it was imagined they would have been against the person(s) who saw what they were not supposed to see. > c) I don't see how this can be all blamed on the former manager as the > "downward spiral" continued at accelerated pace after he had left. I don't know that it accellerated any, but it did continue. My opinion, worth all that you've paid for it, is that problems led to coverups. Maintaining business as usual in the face of your business phone provider deciding they don't want to be a phone company for about a month didn't help. And even at the last minute, some dimwit on the efn board decided to sign for a $13,000 account management infrastructure. The problems were: - A GM who was incompitent or willfully doing illegal things to the books - A board who didn't know or wouldn't see - A parent board who trusted its two members serving on both boards to let them know if there was anything they needed to know - Quashed news of what the GM had done - A little bit of mismanagement by efn - A telecom provider receiving a boatload of money who decided not to provide telecom services for awhile - Customers moving to cable in response to prolonged service outages - Wasteful spending within both organisations - Failure to raise funds by OPN Any of these things can kill an organization. All of them have basically killed two. > d) The former supporters and members of EFN/OPN deserve an honest > statement from EFN/OPN officials about what was really going on. By just > glossing it over they will not regain the trust they have lost in our > community. There's nothing left to put your trust in, Horst. UHaul storage full of old, donated equipment? Office space for one at EPUD? The doors locked and OPN required to pay for removal and disposal of whatever is left in its old office? Nah, the story of OPN ends now as the story of efn ended, in financial collapse. That's probably the straightest story you'll get. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
