Mustn’t See TV? Supervisors Still Aren’t on the Air

In Los Angeles, the eye of the camera pans inside City Hall, while in San Francisco, county supervisors are broadcast live to an audience of more than half a million.

But Orange County is not yet ready for prime time.

County supervisors, in the last two years, have killed one proposal and failed to act on another to improve access by televising meetings--and letting the public see them as they are.

Recently, action on a proposal by Supervisors Tom Wilson and Todd Spitzer was postponed, but not before Wilson argued that as elected officials, “communication is one of our most important products.”

At a time when supervisors boast about the county as a growing hub of high technology and a major economic force, the county’s leaders are nevertheless sticking to the parochial attitude of the area’s rural past: Come to Santa Ana if you want to see us in action.

Politicians and communications experts elsewhere in the state say that televising public meetings has worked out well, and they can’t figure out what’s holding up Orange County--the only major county in the state that doesn’t televise its meetings.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who once voted against televising meetings, said he is now “amazed at the number of people” who watch.

“It’s a new day,” said William Rosendahl, senior vice president of operations for Century Communications of Southern California in Santa Monica. “It’s part of putting government in the sunshine and part of informing and connecting the public to the political process.”

Most people have never seen their government in action and a television camera allows that, said Rosendahl, who helped pioneer local cable programming.

“Secondly, more enlightened officials like televised meetings because it allows them to communicate with the public,” he said. “And, if you’re worth your weight as an official, you want to keep that dialogue. This medium allows them to do that.”

Orange County supervisors put over the television access proposal to the board’s March 2 meeting. The proposal would allow taping of three meetings as a pilot project.

“I think all the supervisors were reluctant in the past,” said Wilson. His three-meeting proposal would help county staff judge costs, viewer interest and the ability to televise meetings through the county’s network of private cable companies.

The goal, though, is “moving to live telecasts in the future,” he said.

The proposal is part of a broader effort by Wilson and Spitzer to improve the public’s access to county supervisors and their meetings. Now, most meetings are held Tuesday mornings, when residents with jobs find it difficult to attend.

Public Often in Dark

The board, for instance, has asked county staff to examine costs for allowing residents to use e-mail for public comment on agenda items, enhancing agenda explanations on the county’s Web site and broadcasting board meetings on the Internet.

The board’s Web site simply doesn’t have enough information on agenda items, Tricia Harrigan of the League of Women Voters of Orange County told supervisors at a recent meeting.

The items are so short, Harrigan said, “that you don’t know what they’re about.” She urged supervisors not only to accept e-mail as public comment but to add summaries on agenda items to improve communication.

Wilson took office while the county was slowly recovering from its 1994 bankruptcy, which forced cuts in service and personnel and severely strained county government’s credibility with the public.

The public’s attitude toward county government has improved, but not much, said Mark Baldassare, professor of Urban and Regional Planning at UC Irvine. He conducts annual surveys on public attitudes.

“Fewer than half still think county supervisors have done a good job in solving problems,” Baldassare said. “It’s still well below half, and this is a time when the president and the governor were getting much higher approval ratings.”

Without televised meetings, Baldassare said, “a lot of the people don’t know who their supervisors are and they don’t know about the workings of county government.”

He said that “for better or worse,” most residents rely on television to get most of their information about the world, including their communities.

Part of the problem, as some supervisors view it, is that no single cable company covers all of Orange County. The meetings can be taped live, but there is no automatic mechanism to broadcast them. Cities typically have agreements with cable companies serving their communities to set aside some government access.

By contrast, Los Angeles County supervisors buy time for $400 an hour on UHF channel 58 (KLCS), owned by Los Angeles Unified schools. In San Francisco, there’s only one cable company.

Orange County Supervisors Cynthia Coad and Chairman Charles V. Smith said they favor the idea of televising meetings but will not lend support to the proposal unless the taped meetings are broadcast throughout the county.

“We don’t want them winding up in someone’s round file,” Coad said.

Smith said he also wants staff to research time limits on topics. The board allows three minutes per speaker, but unlimited time per topic.

The concerns of Coad and Smith are expected to be answered easily and are not seen as killing the proposal.

Supervisors in Los Angeles began televising meetings in 1995. The public’s reaction was so positive, said a spokeswoman, that the board first hired a consultant to tape the broadcasts and then purchased its own television equipment.

“It has turned out to be a good experiment for the public to access their government,” said Judy Hammond, director of public affairs for Los Angeles County. “The meetings are at 9:30 a.m., a time when many people work and can’t attend a meeting.”

Annual cost for the program is $300,000, Hammond said.

Last week, supervisors approved two innovative ideas: closed-captioning for Los Angeles County residents who are hearing-impaired and Spanish translation for the county’s growing Spanish-speaking population.

Antonovich favors opening translation of the meetings not only for Spanish-speaking viewers but also for those who speak other languages. He said he previously voted against televised meetings because he didn’t want to use money otherwise destined for library and public safety funds.

Now, he is sold on the project. A two-minute segment during meetings has resulted in such beneficial features as helping place children in need of foster parents, he said.

“I’m surprised that Orange County doesn’t televise its meetings,” said Charles Bookhammer, an aide to Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

Silva Sees Little Interest

Only Jim Silva, who ironically has had his own cable television program, is against the idea.

Silva said that as a Huntington Beach council member, he found that people love to grandstand in front of a television camera.

“In Huntington Beach, we had to move our public comments to the beginning of our meetings to allow people to say what they wanted,” Silva said. People would speak and then go home “to watch themselves on TV.”

Silva said the proposal should be “market-driven,” that is, paid for by a private cable company rather than government. “The board meetings must not be that exciting,” he quipped at a recent meeting, because no cable company is covering them.

But Tom Rogers, who headed the Republican Central Committee in the 1970s, said he believes that many supervisors are not as skilled in public speaking as politicians in Washington and just don’t want the public to see their blunders.

“Silva in particular,” Rogers said, “because he’s not very verbally agile and he’s made some serious blunders. For example, when he was chairman and [County Executive Officer] Jan Mittermeier made a presentation, after she got done with it, he said, ‘Well, thank you Madame Chairman. . . . ‘

“It’s not surprising that he wouldn’t want to appear in public without a script in front of him, a prompter and a handler.”

Silva has not been available for comment over the last several days.

Spitzer is a big advocate of reaching constituents through television. He tapes a cable show once a month that is broadcast for free by a cable company in his south Orange County district.

Spitzer’s chief of staff, Paul Hernandez, said that the supervisor has received lots of positive feedback and that cities with their own access channels have informed Spitzer they would be “more than happy” to lend access time for the board’s meetings.

As far as Baldassare is concerned, it’s time the board began televising its meetings.

“This is something that a lot of other counties and major cities have [concluded]: The public needs to be more in touch with their local leaders,” he said.