Resolution meant to ease AETN, foundation tensions

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Commissioners of the state’s education television network signed off on a resolution Monday meant to smooth ruffled feathers between the network and the nonprofit foundation that supports it.

There was very little discussion during a called emergency telephone conference of the Arkansas Educational Television Network’s governing commission, which voted to give the the network’s fundraising arm, the Arkansas Educational Telecommunications Network Foundation, 15 days to respond to the latest draft of the resolution.

The commission’s response — a seven-point referendum — is a counter answer to the foundation’s April 12 initial suggested compromise to ongoing tensions between the network and its fundraising arm.

Skip Holland, the network’s board chair, initially said the written response was not available to the press because “it is in fact a draft.” Holland agreed to release the document after an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter told the commission the draft was a public document under the state Freedom of Information Act.

Holland said the agreement was necessary because of “the issues that we’ve had with the foundation around the fundraising platform that we have been using.”

“We’re wanting to broaden our abilities to do better fundraising in a digital age,” he said.

Tensions have flared between AETN executive director Courtney Pledger and the foundation since Pledger was appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in March 2017.

Messages left for Pledger were not immediately returned Monday.

Typically, the head of the AETN network also acts as the chief executive officer of the foundation, but in February, the board removed Pledger from the foundation.

The action followed Pledger’s firing of Mona Dixon, the foundation’s director.

Dixon told foundation board Chairman Lynne Rich in a Feb. 26 letter that she was fired because she refused to follow Pledger’s direction to violate state procurement laws when entering into a consulting contract with Team Raney for content development.

Since then, Pledger came under fire from state legislators for negative findings in recent legislative audit that showed Pledger violated state law by not following state procurement procedures when the network entered into a contract last spring with the Public Broadcasting Service to produce the program State of the Art featuring the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The agency also signed a second agreement with the vendor to produce and distribute the film. The contracts totaled $100,000.

Pledger also signed away revenue rights to go to the foundation. The agency told lawmakers at a May hearing that the issue was corrected and any future revenue from the project would go directly to the network, not the foundation.

Other cited deficiencies in the audit included improper bidding, failure to log use of a state vehicle, hiring outside legal counsel, and paying a vendor for training without documentation.

The network’s commission and the foundation board have been going back and forth in negotiations since April to create a manifesto detailing the rules of collaboration between the two entities.

In May, the foundation responsed with a resounding, all-caps “NO” in response to the commission’s demand that Pledger be reinstated as head of the nonprofit.

In Monday’s response, the network’s commission suggested a compromise “in order to insure alignment of mission and objectives” by demanding the full restoration of AETN Foundation Board membership status to both Pledger — or the AETN executive director — and an AETN Commission representative in advance of the September regular foundation board meeting with “such status to include voting rights and all other rights of current AETN Foundation Board Members.”

In exchange, the commission said in the document, the foundation will allow Pledger, or the AETN executive director, to present a list of candidates for the role of AETN foundation director of development to the foundation along with any other qualified candidates who make application for the role.

But the hiring decision will be made at the recommendation of the AETN Foundation Executive Committee and with a vote of the AETN Foundation Board and the AETN Commission.