Warm Up VCR: It’s Supervisors Show!

Next season’s television lineup will include a surprise entry from Santa Ana--the Orange County Board of Supervisors, which overcame two years of debate and delays and voted Tuesday to televise its meetings.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who with colleague Tom Wilson spent two years pushing for the televised meetings, called the 4-1 vote a victory for government openness and accountability.

“The public expects this,” said Spitzer. “The public has an absolute right to know how their tax dollars are spent. It’s in the public’s best interest to have access to the Board of Supervisors meetings, via television.”

The proposal had long faced opposition from a majority of supervisors, for a variety of reasons. Board Chairman Charles V. Smith questioned whether televised meetings would ever be aired, while Supervisor Cynthia Coad was worried about cost. They switched their votes this week after an affordable alternative was introduced, leaving Supervisor Jim Silva as the lone holdout.

The supervisors will only be seen tape-delayed, however, and possibly after midnight.

None of the cable companies or television stations in the county are willing to air live broadcasts of the weekly meetings, which last three hours on average. Public broadcast station KOCE offered to air the meetings from midnight to 5 a.m., the only time slot not filled with regular broadcasting, and the county’s cable operators have agreed to air tapes of the meetings on local government access stations.

The supervisors voted to hire a private production company to tape the meetings, as well as provide staff and broadcast equipment. While the contract will be put out to bid, the county estimated the annual cost to be $113,000, the same as that for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The proposal also includes a one-time expense of $16,000 to equip a production control room.

Smith previously opposed broadcasting the meetings because he feared they would never be aired. He voted in favor of Tuesday’s proposal after the county received assurances from cable operators that the meetings would be shown, albeit at different times in different parts of the county.

Silva opposed the broadcasts because he said they will encourage grandstanding at the board meetings. He also is against government subsidizing the broadcasts, and said television stations would broadcast the meetings on their own if the public demanded it.

The board rejected the option of maintaining the county’s own production facility to cover the meetings, which would have cost an estimated $120,000 a year and required $100,000 in equipment--expenditures Coad had opposed.

“I’m satisfied that we got the best deal we could get,” said Smith, who broke the political logjam on the measure when he announced his support in the spring.

Smith’s support gave proponents of televised meetings a majority on the board back in April, but a vote was put on hold until the supervisors were able to approve funding in next year’s budget.

Until Tuesday’s vote, Orange County was the only major county in California that did not televise its public board meetings. Supervisors in Los Angeles began televising meetings in 1995. Los Angeles also provides closed-captioning for residents who are hearing-impaired and Spanish translation for the county’s growing Spanish-speaking population. Neither service will be available in the Orange County broadcasts.

In April, three meetings were taped and later broadcast by Orange County cable companies and KOCE as part of a pilot program to assess public interest and estimates of production costs.

The response, while positive, came from fewer than 100 people, said Diane Thomas, county public information officer.

“The reaction was underwhelming,” said Coad, who is still concerned that even when the broadcasts do air, they will be seen by relatively few county residents.