By Mark Pazniokas
The Connecticut Public Affairs Network, the nonprofit operator of CT-N since its inception in 1999 as the provider of gavel-to-gavel cable-television coverage of the General Assembly, said today it will end operations Friday, unable to abide by a slashed budget and the loss of editorial control imposed by the legislature.
Paul Giguere, the president of the nonprofit, informed the Office of Legislative Management in a letter that it would cease operations of CT-N at 5 p.m. Friday, ending a tenuous day-to-day deal in place since the expiration of its contract on Sept. 30 and an extension Oct. 31.
“After careful consideration and much deliberation, our organization cannot escape the conclusion that the recent actions to eliminate CPAN’s editorial discretion combined with the drastic reduction in funding has transformed CT-N into a project no longer consistent with our organization’s fiduciary obligations in either the financial or mission sense,” Giguere wrote.
William A. Bevacqua, the network’s vice president of communication and administration, said the legislature rejected a counteroffer that would have temporarily extended its contract, allowing time for it seek outside funding and operate CT-N under a new public-private partnership.
CPAN had agreed to cut its operating budget from $2.8 million to $2.4 million, ending its weekly news-in-review show and other original programming to focus exclusively on legislative sessions, Capitol press conferences and other live events. But the bipartisan budget recently passed cut that by another $1.2 million.
The legislature’s partisan staff has been objecting to CT-N’s coverage of public affairs events outside the State Capitol. In new terms proposed earlier this year, the partisan staff would have more control over the network’s coverage.
Giguere said that was contrary to the original mission embraced by the legislature in 1999: Allow a nonprofit to run CT-N independent of political interference, with the ability to cover the courts and executive branch as well as the General Assembly.
“CPAN was created with a nonpartisan, educational mission to run CT-N as a three- branches network, at arm’s length from the government,” Giguere wrote.
“It was a mission and purpose once supported by the Leadership of the General Assembly. Even the state statute governing CT-N’s revenue intercept refers broadly to coverage of ‘state government deliberations and public policy events.’ The thinking has clearly changed.”
A legislative spokesman had no immediate comment on whether the General Assembly had an alternative plan to keep CT-N alive. The legislature owns the CT-N brand and its distribution channels, which include cable television and streaming video on a web site.
Giguere’s letter to James Tracy, the executive director of the non-partisan Office of Legislative Management, thanked his staff for a good-faith effort to resolve issues raised by the legislature’s political staff.
“My team and I have always found your staff to be honest collaborators and I fully appreciate the lack of options that OLM has been given in this situation,” he wrote.
“I’m sure you know that as the creator of CT-N this is not a decision I would take lightly, but I must take some consolation in concluding CPAN’s association with the project with our editorial integrity intact.”
