Legislature, Nursing Bruised Image, Tries to Picture Itself on TV

Nursing a black eye in public opinion, the Legislature is gingerly taking steps toward expanded television coverage as a way to re-burnish its image.

The idea is to focus on the Legislature in much the same way as Congress is covered unedited by the C-SPAN network. There are also more than 100 local government entities in California that are televised by cable operators.

Unlike the era when Ronald Reagan was governor and television coverage abounded, no television station outside Sacramento maintains its own permanent capital news bureau.

Mindful of the potential political risks, leaders of the Assembly and Senate are tiptoeing into the uncharted arena of creating their own television signal and inviting more public scrutiny of the Legislature.

“Despite all the recent dark clouds of adversity over the Legislature, we do a very good job, and people ought to know that,” said Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel), a leader in the effort for direct and unedited television coverage.

Another supporter, Assemblyman Stan Statham (R-Oak Run), a former television news anchor in Chico, says it is important that the Legislature “try to put out as clean information as possible so the viewers can reach their own conclusions.”

One proposal beginning to advance in the Assembly recommends contracting with a private operator for an experimental closed-circuit television system this summer. If that proves successful, the broadcast would be expanded beyond the Capitol.

In the Senate--where change usually comes slower--advocates of more television coverage say substantial momentum is building for some kind of increased exposure, although no firm plan has emerged.

Put aside for now are such politically delicate but critical questions as: Who would pay for the Legislature televising itself? Who would control the cameras, content and format of the programming? Who would distribute the signal from the Capitol to millions of taxpayers, and how?

Those issues probably will be dealt with as the Legislature considers a television proposal submitted by a 1-year-old charitable, nonprofit organization known as the California Channel.

Similar to C-SPAN, the California Channel would receive an unedited video signal from the Capitol and relay it at cost to cable systems, commercial and public television stations, colleges and universities and virtually anyone else who wanted it.

“We want to create an electronic Town Hall,” said Paul Koplin, executive director of California Channel. “We don’t want taxpayer money. We want only to tap into the legislative (video) feed.”

For more than a decade, various opinion polls and studies have reflected the public’s low regard for the Legislature. It was not until about two years ago that legislators began to confront the issue by starting to draft ethics reform legislation.

But the conviction last month of former state Sen. Joseph P. Montoya (D-Whittier) on seven corruption counts seemed to add a stiff dose of election-year urgency to the task of improving the Legislature’s image. Key members believe television can help.

“I’d like to have something in place before we get out of here this year,” said Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles). “I tend to think people have a more negative opinion of the Legislature than the Legislature deserves. I think that will be seen.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), a supporter of television coverage of legislative activities, appointed a special bipartisan task force to examine the issue and to make recommendations for implementation.

Farr, co-chairman of the task force, said that the in-house trial run of Assembly coverage in June would help decision-makers determine whether the video signal should be expanded.

Farr said initial soundings have evoked mostly favorable responses in the Assembly but election-year questions have been raised about the project’s costs in a tight budget year and its potential for playing into the hands of political opponents.

“Some individuals are just worried about any kind of (cost) criticism, especially in an election year,” Farr said. “The biggest fear is that something will be taped which some opponent will use in an election, even though we will adopt rules saying you can’t do that kind of stuff.”

The task force estimated the contract cost of the two-month Assembly television experiment at about $96,000, assuming a four-day-a-week shooting schedule.

By contrast, purchase and installation by the Assembly of its own permanent production equipment would run about $739,000, plus $48,000 in wages for an operating crew to conduct the same experiment.

In the Senate, Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Energy and Public Utilities Commission, who is heading Senate planning for television, said a recent survey of senators showed “quite a majority thought it was a good idea.”

Rosenthal said respondents believed that both the visiting television crews who occasionally appear in the Senate for major debates and newspapers that regularly cover the Legislature “don’t do an adequate job.”

But the notion of the Legislature televising itself is not without critics, including a senior senator, Ralph C. Dills (D-Gardena). Starting in 1938, Dills served six terms in the Assembly, left to become a trial court judge and returned to the Legislature in 1966 as a senator.

Dills, 80, asserted that when television crews do show up in the Senate, members play to the cameras. “It turns the deliberative body into a campaign ad,” he said.

He forecast that the same would occur if the Legislature got into the business of televising itself. “I don’t think it will improve the image. I don’t know of any particularly earthshaking good results that happened from Congress televising itself.”