Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

S. 493 is a bill to reauthorize two fairly small programs in the U.S. Small Business Administration. Three Republican Senators whose politics are towards the far edge of their party’s spectrum of views — Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn — are planning to introduce amendments to this bill that would stop funding for public broadcasting.

The exact language of these amendments is not publicly available as I write this post, but one Congressional source indicates that Senator DeMint’s amendment would go even further than the bill already passed by the House by requiring the return of federal funds that had already been appropriated by past Congresses (but not yet made available to public stations).

When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was first set up in the 1960′s, one of the ways in which the founders and political leaders of the day sought to reduce political influence on public TV and radio programming was to “forward fund” some of public broadcasting’s activities. That is, a year or two would go by between the time Congress acted and the time the funds could be available to stations. This helped with planning (from the local station’s perspective) and — people thought — would make it less likely that Congress would retaliate against specific programming that might be politically problematic for whoever was in power at the time.

While previous Congressional action this year was aimed at stopping future appropriations to public broadcasting, the DeMint amendment, as described by these sources, would go even further by taking previously-appropriated money back.

Senator DeMint’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Public Broadcasting Should Go Private,” is at the moment front and center on his Senate web page, so he leaves very little doubt as to his feelings about what we do at stations like KUSP.

You can, of course, let your Senators know how you feel; 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting has tools to help you communicate with them…

To the surprise of few and the great disappointment of public radio’s supporters, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1076 today by a 228-192 vote.

Current, which is sort of a trade publication for public broadcasters published by American University in Washington, D.C., has an excellent summary of the debate and the vote.

As was true yesterday when she appeared before the House Rules Committee, Representative Anna Eshoo came out swinging in support of public radio when the debate moved to the floor of the House. Her news release about the bill is linked here.

NPR, which has tended to keep its head down in a public relations sense while the debate about federal support for public broadcasting has been swirling since November, put out a strongly worded press release today, which you can see here.

Seven Republicans broke from their party’s ranks and voted against the bill, none from California, and nowhere near the number needed to prevent passage. All Democrats present voted against the bill.

Now the bill moves to the U.S. Senate. Most observers think this bill will go absolutely nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Having said that, it’s now absolutely clear that it’s going to be very, very hard to stop any legislation that attacks public radio in the House this term.

By the way, today the Senate passed the continuing resolution to keep the government running until April 8 by a vote of 87-13. President Obama will sign the bill before he leaves for a tour of Latin America. As previously noted, this continuing resolution terminates the Commerce Department’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program — a serious loss, especially for smaller public broadcasters, as I’ve discussed previously.

H.R. 1076, which prevents any federal support from flowing (directly or indirectly) to NPR and in the process significantly disrupts the entire funding and budgeting process for local public radio stations, is moving to a House vote tomorrow.

The bill is on an extraordinarily fast track, having been introduced only on Tuesday. This is all the more remarkable because the bill does not have any budget implications for the Federal government — presumably the supreme priority for the House Republican leadership. The bill doesn’t say anything about how much money the government should provide to public radio, only that local stations can’t use any of their federal support for programming.

Anna Eshoo represents part of KUSP’s service area (primarily in the Santa Cruz Mountains) and is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee that has jurisdiction over this bill. As the Democrats are now the minority party in the House, her influence is vastly less than if she was the chair of the subcommittee, but she did have the chance to share her dim view of the bill in testimony before the House Rules Committee today. In part, she said:

“Public broadcasting enriches our sense of the world and educates us. From arts and music, from science and breaking news, to thoughtful public discourse, NPR has set a world standard. These are tough economic times, but what feeds the soul and informs our national intellect should be considered a critical national resource. I will oppose all efforts to remove NPR’s funding.”

There is some more information about the bill and the objections being raised to it at 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, and my blog post on the topic from yesterday.

We will hear more from all sides of this issue tomorrow, I’m sure.

On Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate and vote on a bill that has no budget-reducing provisions, but instead is aimed directly at disrupting the relationship between the producers of public radio programs and the stations that carry the programs.

H.R. 1076 was only introduced this afternoon, so to have it come to a vote only two days later is remarkable and reflects how important breaking down the present system of public broadcasting is to the Republican leadership in the House.

The bill has two main provisions. First, it prohibits NPR from directly receiving any federal financial support. But far more importantly, it prohibits all local public radio stations from using any support they receive from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to acquire and broadcast radio programs from any producer, whether it’s NPR or some other entity.

The bill’s author, Representative Doug Lamborn of Colorado, had introduced previous bills that specifically targeted NPR, but the new bill would go much further by preventing any federal money from being used by stations to acquire programs from anybody. This would be disastrous for all but the wealthiest public radio stations in the U.S. (the ones least dependent on federal support). Up to now CPB support has been able to be used flexibly to meet the many different kinds of expenses stations have to pay. In contrast, many other kinds of income stations receive have some kind of restriction on how the funds are used; this is especially true at stations belonging to colleges and universities.

The acquisition, distribution and creation of programming is, of course, the biggest expense at local stations — it’s our reason for existence, after all. Prohibiting the use of federal support for program acquisition or distribution can be seen, perhaps, as a way for Congress to show how upset it is with NPR without directly (and perhaps unconstitutionally) singling the network out. But it would create an administrative nightmare for local stations and do great damage to how we go about serving our radio listeners and the people who use our Internet services.

The bill can also be seen as a means to chip away at public broadcasting’s capacity to communicate with you and with elected officials. Current law prevents federal funds from being used to pay for political advocacy or lobbying (this is true across the board with federal funds that go to non-profits or for-profits; it’s not something peculiar to public broadcasting). We are careful about not using any CPB support in a way that touches the very small annual expense KUSP incurs in, for example, writing this blog post. My salary, payroll taxes, and benefits are paid exclusively out of community support, with no CPB money involved. The ISP services that run this software and let you see this on your computer are donated; again, no CPB money is involved.

However, if a station can’t pay for any of its programs with CPB support, that programming would have to be paid for some other way. If the revenue we receive that is free of political restrictions was all needed to bring you programming, that would force the CPB support to go to other necessary things, like administrative salaries… well, you can see where this is heading.

I think it’s significant that this bill only affects public radio; it has no impact on public television stations.

170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting has more information about this legislation.

Today, on a 271-158 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the three-week continuing resolution I wrote about last Friday in this blog. The resolution avoids a government shutdown in the short term, but strips all funding from the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, an important funding program for infrastructure projects at local public radio and TV stations, as well as school districts, universities and colleges involved in distance learning.

The Republican majority split on this House vote, with many conservatives opposing passage. 85 Democrats voted in favor of the bill, though, enabling the bill to move to the Senate. The division in the Republican rank-and-file may complicate further budget negotiations in the coming weeks, as this story at Politico discusses.

The Senate is expected to pass the short-term spending bill, and President Obama is expected to sign it. In doing so they will terminate a federal program that has been immensely important to KUSP throughout our history. The end of this program (and a number of other “non-Defense discretionary” programs) will probably be overlooked by most observers of the ongoing struggle over federal spending, but I feel great regret.

Late today (Friday 3/11) the House Appropriations Committee released another short-term “continuing resolution” (“CR” for short) to keep the government operating while debate on a full-year budget continues. The federal government has been running on a series of these continuing resolutions since the federal fiscal year started on October 1, 2010.

Unlike the CR passed two weeks ago, this CR, which would keep the government going until April 8, starts the process of dismantling the federal funding support for public broadcasting. The Public Telecommunications Facilities Program is housed in the U.S. Commerce Department, and is not part of the better-known and much larger Corporation for Public Broadcasting. PTFP targets very specific infrastructure projects connected to public broadcasting and distance learning, and, historically, it predates the creation of CPB, PBS, and NPR. Almost all PTFP grants have to be matched by funds raised in the communities that benefit from the project.

PTFP support is distinct from other types of federal funding in that a portion of it flows to the smallest public broadcasters, including student-run, community, tribal, and Low Power FM stations. Many of these stations do not meet the criteria CPB sets for their own funding programs, but I think they play an important role at the grass roots of public media.

In 2010 PTFP distributed over $20 million in grants for public broadcasting infrastructure, including a matching grant to KUSP. Our quest to raise the necessary local funds for that grant is called “Upgrade 2011″ and you can learn more about that here.

The new continuing resolution eliminates almost all of PTFP’s funding for the current year, leaving just enough money to terminate the program.

The Obama Administration has not been a supporter of PTFP, arguing in each of its three annual budget proposals that it should be folded into CPB (without addressing the differences between the programs I mentioned above, or explaining what CPB would cut to make room for the PTFP’s grant-making work). So, with the House majority going full-out to eradicate all public broadcasting support, the Senate hard-pressed to create the bi-partisan super-majority necessary for it to do anything, the White House unlikely to stand up for a program it had consistently proposed to eliminate, and a rapidly-approaching deadline by which something has to pass or else the federal government shuts down — one would have to conclude that the future of this program, very valuable to stations like KUSP, looks very bleak.

The station-run grassroots advocacy project, 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, will seek to rally its network of supporters to defend PTFP when debate on the continuing resolution gets underway next week.

I want to heap praise on the KUSP team that mobilized today to cover the impact of the Pacific tsunami on the Central Coast.

Beginning very early this morning, our group assembled first-hand observations and official reports to give our listeners and web users news that was fast, accurate, and consistently useful. Led by J.D. Hillard, our producer for local news, talk and information programming, the lineup (on the mic and behind the scenes) included Johnny Simmons, Steve Laufer, Nick Fountain, Duncan Lively, Brant Herrett, Tariq Lundy, Michael Lewis, and Sean Rameswaram. Apologies to anyone I overlooked, and sincere thanks to everyone who helped. Nick also filed stories for NPR that aired nationally.

You can see some of their handiwork in the “KUSP Reports” section of kusp.org.

After the last two posts, I’m very happy to look on the bright side and thank about 1,000 KUSP listeners and Internet users who made a gift during our just-completed Spring Membership Drive!

We finished the drive tonight at 7:00 after eight days of fundraising, a full two days ahead of plan, raising $100,000. Our Spring 2010 drive raised $80,000 in ten days, so this is a real upswing in our fortunes.

Great thanks go out to all the volunteers who pitched in to make the drive a success, and to my very hard-working colleagues on KUSP’s professional staff.

Many public radio stations are enjoying successful spring campaigns, demonstrating the commitment our audience members have to the stations they love. Onward!

I would be completely remiss in not saying something about the situation that has unfolded this week at NPR.

On Monday night (3/7) I learned that the network’s top fundraising executive, Ron Schiller, was leaving to take a job at the Aspen Institute. Too bad, I thought; I had met Ron a number of times since NPR hired him away from the University of Chicago in 2009 and thought he was getting a pretty good handle on the complex business of public radio. Ron seemed to understand that NPR (the news producer and program distributor) could succeed in fulfilling its aspirations only to the degree that it could stay in alignment with, and collaborate with, its independent, locally-controlled member stations (like KUSP)… and getting major philanthropic support for NPR would be far easier if he worked closely with strong local stations, which themselves were becoming more philanthropically oriented.

Boy, was I wrong.

On Tuesday Ron Schiller’s departure was expedited by about two months after he conceded he had said “stupid things” in a February meeting with people posing as possible NPR donors that was clandestinely recorded on video and then (in heavily edited form) presented to a breathless world by Tucker Carlson’s Internet news project, The Daily Caller. James O’Keefe, whose videos of a phony pimp and prostitute fatally damaged ACORN, apparently masterminded this so-called “sting” operation directed at NPR.

How Ron Schiller and his NPR colleague, Betsy Liley, let themselves get pulled into this I will never understand. In any event, the trap was sprung and a new wave of anti-NPR rhetoric poured forth, most significantly from Republican office-holders and pundits who are making every effort to shut off all tax-supported funding for public broadcasting.

On Tuesday night the NPR Board of Directors (the majority of whom are managers of local NPR stations, just as I am) convened and obtained the resignation of Vivian Schiller, NPR’s President and CEO. Vivian Schiller’s removal was duly reported the morning after, and my best sense of my manager colleagues today is that many of them are pleased and relieved. Me, not so much.

I strongly believe that Ron Schiller had no business representing NPR in any capacity if he was given to saying the things he apparently said to O’Keefe’s performance artists about members of the conservative or Tea Party movements, no matter what he personally thinks. He was on the clock, he was representing NPR (and therefore, indirectly, much of public radio, KUSP included), and there are standards of professional conduct that apply to him in that situation. He conceded that he blew it, NPR and public broadcasting sustained damage to our reputations as a consequence, so that’s it. Bye. Have a nice life.

I am much more troubled by Vivian Schiller’s exit. I concede that there’s an argument to be made that if too many things go wrong with any outfit, you get rid of the boss. But as far as I can tell there is no reason to believe that Vivian Schiller had any more tolerance for Ron Schiller’s apparent misconduct, once it was revealed, than I would have had were I to have been his boss. I don’t think she did anything to foster an anti-conservative environment at NPR — as a long-time worker in mainstream journalism, I know she accepted the principle that doing the work NPR does requires fair treatment and respect for almost all viewpoints, including ones that you personally disagree with.

The effectiveness of the current attack on public broadcasting’s federal support, and the probable consequences for our public service on a national scale if that support vanished, are creating immense anxiety for many public radio managers. I understand that. But I don’t think sending Vivian Schiller packing will deflect the attack. I think there is a good chance it will, if anything, make public broadcasting’s adversaries even more determined. That’s certainly the view of Rob Paterson, an observer of our medium whom I like and respect; his views are tartly expressed by his blog post today.

One thing is guaranteed: the absence of an effective CEO during this critical time will prevent NPR and its member stations from coming to grips with many urgent issues. The federal funding question is just one of them. No less crucial is reaching agreement on how to organize and fund our ongoing collective transition from a radio-only system to a constellation of local, state/regional, and national/global entities that serve audiences on the radio, on desktops, and on mobile Internet-connected thingamajigs. Vivian urgently wanted to see this transition executed successfully, while building NPR’s preeminence as a national news organization. Failure to reach a good outcome on this front would be, I submit, a national tragedy. Delay seems certain. And we all know how helpful delay is when managing Internet-driven change.

NPR’s Ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, has some helpful words about the Schiller fiasco (parts I and II) on her blog, here.

[Updated 11:30 AM 3/10/11 to add] And Dennis Haarsager, who preceded Vivian Schiller as NPR’s CEO (although on an interim basis), adds very useful perspective and a number of informative links via a post on his “Technology 360″ blog.

Joyce Slocum, the network’s top lawyer, is now in charge of NPR pending a search for a new permanent CEO. Seriously. If you can point me to a time when good things happened to a news organization while it was led by an attorney, I’d appreciate it…

While many people interested in public broadcasting were captivated by the chaos in NPR’s executive ranks, the U.S. Senate took up and voted down both of the spending plans that had been proposed for the remainder of the fiscal year (through September 30). This leaves the future of federal funding for public radio and TV, and many other “non-defense discretionary” federal programs, murkier than ever.

First the Senate voted down H.R. 1, the budget proposal passed by the House of Representatives, by a vote of 56-44. Minutes later, an alternative spending plan put forward by the Senate Appropriations Committee (controlled by Democrats) failed on a 58-42 vote. Since it appears nothing will be permitted to move through the Senate without a 60-vote supermajority requiring at least some Republicans to go along with the majority Democrats (or a larger number of Democrats to go along with the minority Republicans), the stage is set for a protracted struggle — even before efforts to reconcile the Senate’s idea of a spending plan with the House.

Meantime, nine days remain before the federal government again runs out the clock on its current stopgap authority to operate, passed by Congress about a week ago.