THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409230192
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Get any more chatty than Council did at its meeting Tuesday and it'll qualify for network TV. OK, so ``The Price Is Right'' needn't worry, much less ``The Young and the Restless.''
But the point needs making because to the good move toward more casual briefing sessions among Council members and city staff, Council could couple a bad move: cutting out live TV broadcast of these briefings, more neutral, in-depth and informative than the formal Council sessions that follow.
Who watches these briefings, usually sometime between 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Tuesdays? The ill and the jobless? The city says it can't gauge viewership. But the potential is tremendous: The city does know that at least 112,000 households in Virginia Beach have subscribed to the basic cable service that includes VBTV.
By televising, live, informal meetings intended for quizzing staff on issues to come before Council and offering ideas that sounded better in the shower than they do in City Hall, some Council members see tremendous potential for looking less decorous and informed, and feeling more inhibited, than is politic.
Others foresee as much political posturing for cameras in the back room as goes on in Council chambers. In a more informal setting, the pontifical can be interrupted more easily. But the only sure cure for pomposity is a better class of Council member.
All Council members see a big bill for extending cable to the conference room. How big a bill? It depends on how many cameras - three are minimal - and how much asbestos has to be removed to string the cable; none, possibly. In any case, the cost is probably less per Council member than the lot of them spent as candidates on campaign advertising - yet here they are, arguing about free television time throughout their Council term. Which is more scary: That some members will make fools of themselves? Or that view-ers/voters won't make the distinction?
One alternative discussed Tuesday is taping the briefings for delayed broadcast. That won't save money, if delayed broadcast is to have even the quality of the current system. It won't keep silly questions or inadvisable comments from being preserved for posterity, or pomposity from stalling the action.
Councilwoman Strayhorn's repeated appeals for a Council kinder to each other and to everybody who comes before it might help, but don't bet the Christmas Club account. And this is one of few times in recent memory when government seemed willing to bet that the public can trust the press to tell the full story, and tell it right.
What would delayed broadcast or a single fixed TV camera or no television at all do? Reduce the number of eyewitnesses to local government at work to the city staff and interested citizens who can squeeze into the conference room with Council. If that makes Council members less inhibited, it also makes their deliberations seem more secretive.
The U.S. military descends on Haiti to open its government to democracy. The rest of the world breezes down the Information Superhighway. Virginia Beach City Council reverses into a back room. The only thing missing is the smoke.
There's got to be a better way, if nothing more than tossing Bill Harrison's ``awfully uncomfortable'' chair, buying him and the rest something ergonomically correct and spending a couple of casual but productive hours off the dais and on the level with public and staff: in shirtsleeves and the front rows of Council chambers, brainstorming finance, light rail . . . a 21st-century City Hall. by CNB