3 Supervisors Say Televised Meetings OK With Them

Signaling a change in policy, Orange County’s three newest supervisors say they support televising Board of Supervisors meetings.

Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson said Tuesday that he will ask the board next month to approve a pilot program in which meetings would be videotaped using existing county cameras and distributed to cable companies for broadcast.

Meanwhile, Supervisor Todd Spitzer is trying to establish a private foundation designed to raise money for more sophisticated equipment that might eventually beam board meetings live to the public.

Supervisor Charles V. Smith also expressed support for broadcast meetings, as long as costs can be kept to a minimum.

“I think it’s a positive thing that allows people to better understand county government,” Smith said. “If we can keep the costs as low as possible, it’s money well spent.”

Orange County is one of the few urban counties in California that do not telecast board meetings. Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have all started broadcasts in recent years, as have many cities in Orange County.

The Orange County board voted down two separate telecast proposals last year amid concerns from some supervisors that the cameras would create a “circus atmosphere” and distract them from sound policy making.

Wilson said his pilot program is a cost-effective way of determining the public’s interest in televised meetings as well as judging whether the presence of cameras changes the atmosphere in the board room.

“It’s a first step,” he said. “It allows us to test the waters. There is no reason to go full-bore and spend a lot of money before we are sure whether folks want this or would prefer to just read about it in the papers.”

If supervisors approve the program, board meetings could be available for broadcast by the summer. But there is no guarantee that all cable operators would run them.

Bob Gold, with the Southern California Cable Assn., said several Orange County cable companies probably don’t have the channel capacity to accommodate a new “county channel.” But others should be able to fit a weekly board broadcast into their schedules.

Cable companies across the county are in the process of installing new digital cable boxes that will provide viewers with far more channels, making broadcast of county meetings much more feasible, he said.

“As we see an ease-up in channel capacity over the [next year], that should help,” Gold added.

Because cities control cable franchises, they have more leverage than the county to get their meetings on the air. Some cities require cable companies to broadcast their city council meetings and supply video equipment as part of their franchise agreements--power the county government doesn’t have on a countywide basis.

When the board took up the telecast issue last year, supervisors William G. Steiner and Jim Silva expressed concern that television cameras would be a distraction and cause people to grandstand and sermonize.

Silva said that when he was a Huntington Beach councilman, dozens of residents would line up to address the council and get on television, pushing important city decisions past midnight. “Both the council and the public played to the cameras,” Silva said at the time.

Steiner said he experienced similar problems when on the Orange school board.