Supervisors Develop Television Habit

The camera may soon be panning on Orange County supervisors.

They are poised Tuesday to set aside as much as $250,000 in next year’s budget to videotape weekly meetings.

“Our taxpayers deserve to see how their money is being spent and to observe firsthand whether the board is truly supervising county government,” Supervisor Todd Spitzer said.

Final approval of the proposed $3.85-billion annual budget is expected at the board’s meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The budget goes into effect for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

County officials are awaiting a staff report before mapping out details for televising meetings.

Videotaping cleared a major hurdle last week when the five supervisors voted 3 to 2 on the proposal during a straw vote. Although the action was informal, it does set planning direction for the county.

“I think the straw vote is a significant indicator that televised board meetings are going to become a reality,” said Supervisor Tom Wilson, who supported televised meetings with Chairman Charles V. Smith and Spitzer.

Supervisors Jim Silva and Cynthia Coad dissented.

Wilson has argued that televised meetings provide greater public access to the board.

Silva, who has opposed televising meetings for fear of encouraging grandstanding, now says he believes cable companies should broadcast meetings based on market demand and not rely on a government subsidy.

Orange County is the only major county in the state that does not televise its meetings.

In April, three meetings were taped and later broadcast by Orange County cable companies and KOCE public broadcasting station as a pilot program to determine public acceptance and to allow county staff to gather information about production costs and distribution.

“Overall, the response was very positive,” said Diane Thomas, county public information officer.

Response was limited to fewer than 100 people, Thomas said, and a majority of callers were “enthusiastic and positive” about viewing the board’s meetings. A full report on production costs for weekly tapings and alternatives is not yet finished, she said.

Broadcast scheduling was done at the discretion of cable companies with only one station running the board’s meetings during prime time. For example, KOCE ran the meetings between 1 and 5 a.m., a poor slot, Coad said. She favors the Internet, which can provide an audio version of meetings as they occur.

“With the Internet, obviously it has a ways to go to get visual, but you can have access to all the archived meetings and real sound,” she said. “Basically, I’m in favor of televised meetings, but I’m just against the cost.”

In contrast to Los Angeles and San Diego counties, which rely on a single television station for countywide broadcasting, Orange County has numerous cable companies. In Los Angeles, supervisors are on KLCS Channel 58, a UHF station owned by the Los Angeles Unified School District. San Diego supervisors are broadcast on the County Television Network (CTN), which provides 24-hour programming available on several cable stations.

Some supervisors, such as Smith, withheld support until the county could get guarantees from all cable companies to broadcast the meetings. Smith said he changed his mind after the companies ran the meetings and he began to get feedback from individuals saying they saw the meetings on TV.

“The cable companies were very good about putting them on, and that satisfied me,” he said. “I wanted to make sure the videotapes didn’t get put on a shelf and forgotten.”

A quick poll of cable companies found that they could have gauged viewer reaction but were never asked by the county to monitor that. “Follow up?” said Marilee Jackson, Comcast production manager. “We really had nothing to do with it.”

Judith Schaefer, KOCE director of public information, said one method is to conduct a Nielsen study, but that is very costly. “Otherwise, I checked and we got about four positive responses from viewers,” she said.

Century Communications heard from only a handful of callers, who said they appreciated the meetings, said Bridget Kelly, public affairs director. In the cable business, she said, “sometimes that’s good news.”

Richard Barnard, Huntington Beach deputy city administrator and executive producer for the city’s government access HB TV 3 station, put the supervisors in a prime-time slot. “The value that it has is that it keeps the citizens connected to their representative government,” Barnard said. “How many people have to watch it? One? A thousand? It doesn’t matter, the point is even if you’re just reaching a few people and they’re taking an interest in it, that’s what it’s all about.”

The county did not request viewership reaction but instead added the county’s voice mail, fax number, e-mail and Web site address to each videotape. “We told the public this is the way to contact us,” Thomas said. “We even set up a survey on the Web site.”

Videotaping and production for the pilot program was donated by Time Warner Communications, Chapman University’s television department and Comcast Cablevision. The county then paid for tape duplication and made sure each cable company in the county received a copy.