Municipal TV Hookup Falters as 2 Agencies Maneuver

By Edward Hudson

WHITE PLAINS FIVE years ago a closed‐circuit television network that was designed to improve the exchange of information among officials of local government agencies scattered across the New York‐New Jersey-Connecticut region was put into operation amid high hopes. The network is still regarded as having great potential by those who operate it and by almost everyone else associated with it, but its future is doubtful.

On Tuesday the board of directors of the Metropolitan Regional Council, which operates the network, is scheduled to hear officially from the agency that supplies most of the network's funds, the Tristate Regional Planning Commission, about MRC‐TV's future.

The commission, which signaled its intention to end its financial support of the Council last November when it voted to continue support on a monthby‐month basis, recently voted to continue payments through last April 19. Tristate officials say that this will in all likelihood be the last of their agency's support.

The basic idea of the hookup, which enables officials in Stamford, for example, to talk to their counterparts in Westchester County or Middlesex County, N.J., about problems of common concern, was to avoid the need for local officials in each area to continually “re‐invent the wheel” in making decisions.

The network, which has its central studio in the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, also serves as training service for county and local government employees in the region, providing televised courses in a variety of subjects ranging from shorthand to solid‐waste technology.

The major problem, by most accounts, is money. The Tristate Regional Planning Commission has been providing about half of the regional council's annual budget of $500,000, and Tristate, a planning agency and a clearinghouse for Federally financed projects, is having money problems of its own.

But there also appear to be other reasons for the problems facing the Metropolitan Regional Council, a private nonprofit organization set up in 1956, which gets the rest of its funds from participating local governments.

One of these is reported friction between Tristate and the M.R.C. over duplication of regional coordinating functions. The 22-year-old council concentrates most of its efforts on television activities, although it still performs other functions, such as studying the region's economy, according to council officials.

Even some of M.R.C.'s supporters acknowledge that the television system, for all its advantages as a means of getting top officials together and of training for municipal employees, evidences less than total professionalism in some of its programs. This again is apparently a result of financial problems. M.R.C. is on a shoestring budget, these officials say, and “if anyone gets good, he leaves.”

Mayor Louis A. Clapes of Stamford, who is chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Regional Council, Inc., which operates the TV network, says that he believes that it “could become a very effective tool it it was allowed to mature.”

What's required, he says, is to get more of the communities in the tristate region to participate. The mayor,

Closed circuit gets officials together and trains workers, but short funds hold it back and cloud future whose city is the only one in Connecticut with the equipment necessary to participate in the system (similar studios exist in 12 other locations in the region), says he understands Greenwich officials are interested in having their own studio. In general, however, the network's expansion has been frustrated by the lack of local funds, Mr. Clapes said.

One of the laments of M.R.C. officials is the obscurity of their operation, which only officials and some employees in a relative handful of the many municipalities in the region are aware of.

“It's been in existence for five years and yet very few people know about it,” complains Mary Haris, the president of the council, who says that the financial shoestring on which her organization is operating is getting thinner.

“Every night I give a prayer,” says Mrs. Haris, “that the transmitter is not going to burn out — each tube costs close to $2,000. We do all our own maintenance.”

One of the newest misfortunes to befall the council, according to Mrs. Haris, was a recent decision by New York City to discontinue its financial contribution to M.R.C. because of budget problems.

Despite this development, Mrs. Haris has allowed New York City officials to continue to appear on the network's discussion programs with suburban officials. “I can't have a regional program without New York City,” she says. “I've got to have their expertise if I'm going to have good dialogue.”

Thus, the other day Arlene Goldstein, a member of the board of directors of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, appeared on a 90minute program on hospital costs in the region. Also on the program were 14 other elected or appointed officials, sitting in front of small television cameras in five studios in government offices in Stamford, White Plains, Mineola, L.I., Islip, L.I., and New Brunswick, N.J.

In the White Plains studio, which is just down the hall from the office of the Westchester County Executive, Alfred B. DelBello, it was apparent that some of the participants were having difficulty seeing and hearing. Carolyn Whittle, a Westchester County legislator, squinted at the screens of the monitors and cupped her hand around her ear. The black-and-white screens were sometimes hazy‐looking and at times the sound was faint from New Jersey.

As officials of first one area and then another got their turn at the microphone, Jack Lamping, executive director of the New Jersey Association of Counties, who served as moderator, tried to enliven the dialogue by inviting “argumentative “ intrusions into long presentations. But there were no takers, except possibly for Carmine Asparro, a fiscal official at the Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y.

Off to the side of the room that serves as a studio a county employee sat at an audio control panel, adjusting dials to improve the sound. A small TV camera perched near the ceiling swung from side to side, picking out the speakers in the room.

After the show some of those who had taken part were asked to assess the forum. Bernard Weinstein, Weschester's Commissioner of Hospitals, said the system had potential but he would have preferred that the experts face each other in person in one room, with the meeting televised to a larger audience.

Sometimes, however, the inter-mu- nicipal programs are more successful than anticipated. A week before the hospitals program, officials of Westchester County and Essex County, N.J., sat before their respective screens in White Plains and Newark and discussed the county executive form of government, which Essex County recently adopted.

Later Roger Cohen, press secretary to Peter Shapiro, the new Essex County Executive, said both Mr. Shapiro and Mr. DelBello, who led the Westchester group, had intended to make only token introductory remarks and let their staffs continue the TV discussion. “But both stayed on for about two hours,” he said.

The Council has some solid supporters in the suburbs, and these include Mr. DelBello, a member of the board of directors of the Council, Francis Purcell, Nassau County Executive, also board member, and Mayor Louis A. Clapes of Stamford, chairman of the board of the Council.

Discussions with all three indicate they look at the problem of Tristate's relationship to the M.R.C. somewhat differently. Mr. DelBello seems to believe that Tristate is trying to take over the council, which has been under Tristate's budgetary wing for years but apparently has managed to remain under control of regional government officials nevertheless.

Mr. DelBello says that local communities have resisted a Tristate takeover because those communities lack as much control over Tristate actions as they have exercised over M. R.C.

But according to Greg Wynne, press secretary to Mr. Purcell, the Nassau County executive has gradually shifted his position from opposition to a takeover by Tristate to agreement that there is no alternative. “Our feeling is they are the money source and we've got to try to work with them,” he said.

Mr. Wynne said that Mr. Purcell regarded MRC‐TV as “a very valuable communications and training tool within the Tristate region.” He added that “it is particularly beneficial to Nassau in providing our in‐house training for county employees at a cost far less than we could obtain anywhere else. The training averaged out at $1.90 per person.”

A total of 700 Nassau County employees took MRC‐TV courses in 1978, he said, in such areas as fire investigation, Spanish, law enforcement activity and management training. Nassau pays MRC‐TV $26,000 a year for the equipment and for dues, Mr. Wynne said. This compares with Westchester's annual cost of approximately $19,000.

The council's board of directors meeting Tuesday is scheduled to hear from the Tristate Commission's new director, Frank T. Johnson, who tried last month to get the commission's board of directors to cut off funds to M.R.C., according to a Tristate spokesman. The spokesman added that the Tristate Commission had decided last November to stop supporting the Council and to continue financing it on month-to-month basis while efforts to find another “home” for it were made.

Tristate cites financial problems as the reason it cannot go on financing the council and its TV system. “We've just lost $300,000 in funding,” the spokesman said. “The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development cut the budget of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, and so has turned around and cut ours. It's led to quite a cash shortfall.”

Aside from its financial problems the Tristate Commission has been under attack on the political front, where critics have accused it of waste and a lack of leadership. The Governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have ordered a major new study of the commission by a 15‐member task force.