CLARKSVILLE -- Commissioners of the state's educational television network took no action after spending more than two hours Friday in executive session discussing a performance evaluation of the agency's director.
The employment review of Arkansas Educational Television Network's executive director, Courtney Pledger, by the agency's commission -- which met at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville -- was just "an annual evaluation" and not in response to a problematic audit reviewed Thursday by state Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, said AETN spokeswoman Tiffany Head.
Pledger told an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter before being called into the meeting room that this was her first employment evaluation since being appointed to the post by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in March 2017.
Upon reconvening, commission Chairman Annette Herrington said no action would be taken, but that "the commission supports the director and we're proud of the initiatives in the strategic plan that she's developed in the past two years."
Herrington immediately turned the meeting over to Pledger to update the commission on programming and other ongoing projects within the public network.
Pledger -- who was appointed to the role after the death of Allen Weatherly, who had been AETN's executive director since 2001 -- had been executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival since 2012 and is a former film and TV producer and director.
Since assuming the head role at AETN, tensions have flared between Pledger and the network's fundraising arm, the Arkansas Educational Telecommunications Network Foundation. And a recently released legislative audit cited the agency for five "significant deficiencies."
As head of the agency as well as the foundation, Pledger skirted state procurement laws when she 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, according to the audit. 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 Thursday that the issue was corrected and any future revenue from the project would go directly to the network, not the foundation.
Other violations uncovered 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 foundation board removed Pledger as chief executive officer of the foundation after she fired Mona Dixon, the foundation's development director, in February.
According to a Feb. 26 letter from Dixon to foundation board Chairman Lynne Rich obtained by the Democrat-Gazette under the state Freedom of Information Act, Dixon said she was fired because she refused Pledger's request to violate state procurement laws when entering into a consulting contract with Team Raney for content development.
The commission and the foundation board, led by Rich, have since been in negotiations to draft a resolution delineating the rules of collaboration between the two entities.
On Friday, Herrington gave the commissioners a "comparative analysis" detailing the foundation's response to demands the agency's commissioners made at its March 27 meeting.
In response to the commission's demand that Pledger be reinstated as the head of the foundation, an all-caps "NO" was listed, the foundation response said.
Instead, a new chief executive officer of the foundation should be hired solely by the foundation board and the new executive would "hire and supervise staff," the foundation said in the document.
The foundation agreed to reinstate voting rights to Pledger and a commission representative on the foundation board, but "with NO role or authority over Foundation staff or operations."
AETN's request that foundation board members be limited to four three-year terms was agreed to by the foundation, but they balked at the suggestion that existing members who served longer than 12 years be removed from the foundation board.
Instead, the foundation suggested that those long-time board members be allowed to serve two more years.
In an interview after the meeting, Herrington said the negotiations are ongoing and did not know when the resolution between the two entities would be finalized.
Metro on 05/11/2019