Two Topics KOCE-TV Can’t Avoid: Politics and Religion

OK, no more religious metaphors from me when it comes to writing about KOCE-TV’s future. No more insinuations that one side is doing the work of, you know, that guy with the pitchfork.

I riled some of the key local players enmeshed in the increasingly tense and testy question of what will happen to KOCE, Orange County’s PBS affiliate that was sold in 2004 to the local foundation that had been operating it -- a sale voided by a state appeals court.

The loser in the original bidding was the Dallas-based Daystar Television Network, a televangelism operation that thinks it was gamed by the Orange County folks who didn’t want the station converted to religious programming.

That’s how it looks to me, too, which is why I dipped into my Going-to-Hell bag of metaphors. Ah, we all had a good laugh, except for those Orange Countians who insist they hadn’t done anything underhanded and didn’t appreciate being linked to Satan.

Amen.

Besides, at the moment, the politics of the matter are more interesting than the religion.

Somewhere within Gov. Schwarzenegger’s grasp is a bill that would allow the Coast Community College District, which owns KOCE, to treat it -- for sale purposes -- not as surplus property but as an entity that could be sold for less than fair-market value.

The effect would be that the district could consider factors other than dollars on the table when agreeing to terms. Daystar attorneys say that bill is a mere end-run around existing law; the bill’s supporters say it would better reflect what should go into deciding what to do with a PBS station that shouldn’t be likened to surplus property like furniture.

Why, you ask, would Schwarzenegger bother to veto it?

In a roundabout way, that’s what Jo Ellen Allen seems to be asking. In a state bubbling over with issues, Allen says, “this little tiny issue got incredible attention and pressure. It was amazing. I will let you surmise as to why that is.”

Allen is a highly interested observer. She’s vice chair of the Orange County Republican Party and chairwoman of the KOCE-TV Foundation. Those dual roles leave her with friends on opposite sides of the issue. That is, every Republican state legislator opposed the bill, but the foundation supports it -- a message Allen delivered in person to legislators.

She describes the lobbying against the bill as “excessively intense,” and she ought to know: The chief lobbyist is Scott Baugh, chairman of the county Republican Party. Baugh is lobbying in his private business capacity and not on behalf of the county party.

Allen is a self-described evangelical Christian and conservative Republican. “One thing that bothers me is that a lot of people have tried to make this a religious issue, and it is not,” she says. “It has nothing to do with religion. I don’t want to stop Daystar. I want to keep KOCE as a public broadcasting station.”

Daystar attorneys say it’s all about religion. Daystar is suing the KOCE-TV Foundation and three of the five district board members over the issue.

“There’s no question they tried to pull a fast one,” says Daystar attorney Richard Lloyd Sherman in referring to the bill now on Schwarzenegger’s desk. He says Daystar considers the foundation and board to have been in cahoots from the start “to get this station to the foundation.”

Not true, says Mel Rogers, the foundation president. He says the foundation had nothing to do with writing the bill, which was the brainchild of district board member Jerry Patterson. But Rogers makes no apologies for wanting KOCE to remain a PBS outlet.

Another professed admirer of KOCE is Orange County state Sen. Dick Ackerman. However, he’s also the GOP leader in the Senate and appears to be one of the bill’s leading opponents. Compared with the Democrats’ universal healthcare bill, Ackerman says, the KOCE bill is “way down the list.”

However, he says, there’s a principle involved -- that a public asset could be sold for less than fair-market value. “That’s sort of a cornerstone principle with most Republicans, probably all Republicans. That’s why this got a little more attention than most.”

Ackerman says he’s made his displeasure over the bill known to the governor’s chief of staff but won’t put on a full-court press to get a veto.

Totten, the Daystar attorney, acknowledges that although many Republicans would urge a veto, others have ties to KOCE and may well be asking the governor to sign it.

As they say in TV, stay tuned.

“I’ve been told the governor doesn’t sign many bills without Republican support,” Totten says.

Naturally, he and Sherman are hoping for a veto.

And if it doesn’t come? “Daystar is praying,” Sherman says, “that there will be some intervention through other means.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.