Expensive HD Cameras at State Legislative Building May Go to Waste

NBC Connecticut has learned about an unusual victim of the state budget battle.

Boxes of expensive video equipment are collecting dust at the Legislative Office Building. Even though your taxpayer money paid for high definition cameras, they may never be used.

For 18 years, the Connecticut Public Affairs Network has run the Connecticut Television Network (CT-N), bringing coverage of the state’s executive, judicial and legislative branches into your homes.

“Operating at arms-length from the government,” President and CEO Paul Giguere said, “also covering public policy events that happen around the state.”

The 33 person staff had prepared for a 15 percent funding cut, Giguere said, but now the budget that passed in the house and senate this week slashes their funding by 65 percent.

“We are in the process now of evaluating with our board whether we can continue to operate at that reduced level,” Giguere said.

Senator Mae Flexer joined 33 colleagues in voted for the compromise bi-partisan budget, but she called it a “dire concern” that CT-N might shut down after October 31.

“Everything had to be looked at for cuts,” she said, “but at the moments when we’re making these really tough decisions that’s when transparency is more important than ever.”

Not only is the future of CT-N in jeopardy, but the budget also cancels $3.2 million in bonding meant to install new high definition cameras into the legislative hearing rooms. Instead, they have been sitting in boxes in a storage area in one of the hearing rooms for two years.

“They had purchased those as phase one with the expectation that the bonding would be appropriated to continue the installation,” Giguere said.

“That is exactly the image that no taxpayer wants to see,” Flexer said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing that frustrates people about state government is the idea these very expensive pieces of equipment could be sitting there unused, let’s cut through the bureaucracy and get that to work.”

If the Connecticut Public Affairs Network stays on the air, it will likely need to scale back operations to only cover what happens inside the Capitol building.

Each of the Sony HD cameras costs about $9,000, so the total purchase was well over $100 thousand.

Flexer said she would have liked more time to review the final budget documents before the 2 a.m. vote on Thursday.