The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has taken important first steps to ending political tests in hiring and offering protection to whistle-blowers. However, the CPB appears unwilling to make changes that would ensure more transparency and accountability. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis of CPB governance by Common Cause and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD).
Common Cause and CDD urged the CPB board, at its meeting today, to demonstrate that it is willing to adopt the substantive and necessary reforms that would restore integrity and public accountability to the scandal-plagued agency. As the attached analysis illustrates, the proposals under consideration by the CPB Board to date fall far short of what has been recommended.
“The CPB must realize that these governance and ethics issues aren’t going away,” said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree. “Creating committees to recommend anemic reforms isn’t good enough. It’s long past time to adopt unimpeachable policies that ensure the CPB – which makes decisions about how taxpayer dollars are to be spent – operates above board and with complete public transparency.”
The CPB has been struggling to change its flawed governance process for nearly a year. In July 2005, public interest groups, including Common Cause and CDD, asked for specific governance reforms in the wake of scandals involving former CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. In November 2005, the CPB’s own Inspector General also made a series of recommendations to improve the agency’s corporate governance processes, after finding evidence of partisan hiring and other wrongdoing by CPB’s top management. To respond to these calls for reform, the CPB created a Corporate Governance Committee and an Executive Compensation Committee.
On April 7, the CPB’s Corporate Governance Committee rejected proposed financial disclosure requirements, questioning whether such disclosures were material to their work at CPB, and raising concerns that personal information could be leaked. “CPB board members should have nothing to hide from the public. Yet, the board sent back for revision a safeguard recommended by staff that would require full financial disclosure,” said Jeffrey Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It appears that the current CPB board leadership isn't interested in serious governance rules.”
The full CPB Board is meeting on May 1 and 2 to consider a slate of policies related to ethics, conflicts of interest, open meetings procedures, whistle-blower protections and other public accountability measures.