Board asks for KOCE rehearing

Michael Miller

The battle over the fate of KOCE-TV escalated this week as the Coast

Community College District asked for a court rehearing on the sale of

the station, and the Daystar Television Network filed a lawsuit

charging the district with religious discrimination.

Tuesday, the college district’s attorney, Milford Dahl filed a

petition with the Fourth District Appellate Court in Santa Ana,

asking the court to reconsider a June 23 decision that reversed the

sale of the station to the KOCE-TV Foundation. The decision accused

the district of “the rankest sort of favoritism” in selling the

station to the foundation rather than to Daystar, a Christian

broadcasting network.

Daystar had already filed a petition for a rehearing this month,

asking the court to award it ownership of KOCE immediately. On

Thursday, it sued the district for unspecified monetary damages,

claiming that board members violated its constitutional freedom of

religion by refusing to sell the station to them.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court, names the district, the

foundation, foundation president Mel Rogers and district trustees

Jerry Patterson, George Brown and Walt Howald as defendants. Trustee

Armando Ruiz voted against the sale to the foundation, while fifth

member Mary Hornbuckle was not on the board at the time.

In the complaint, attorney Richard Lloyd Sherman accused the

defendants of “blatant discrimination on the basis of religion” and

claimed that the network suffered economic damages due to being

“wrongfully and illegally prevented” from acquiring ownership of

KOCE.

Board members argue that the sale to the foundation was legal and

that either of the two options in the appellate court’s ruling --

keeping the station or selling it to the highest bidder -- would be

impossible for the district.

“The district has no control right now because they don’t own the

license,” Dahl said. “That’s the one thing everyone seems to keep

forgetting. The court’s saying it’s got to be unwound, but they don’t

say how to unwind it.”

District officials rejected the claims of religious discrimination

outright, saying they opposed televangelists taking over the station

merely because they were usually not PBS affiliates.

“We have always maintained that we are merely trying to keep the

station the way it has been -- PBS, locally owned with education

courses on it,” said Patterson, who noted that he is Methodist.

The district is hoping an appeal can prevent having to untangle

the ownership of KOCE. In a closed session at the district board

meeting Wednesday, board members agreed to petition the state Supreme

Court if the Appellate Court rejects their current petition.

The petitions and lawsuit are the latest developments in a case

that has even attorneys confused on how to proceed and that has

community members pleading either to keep the station in its current

hands or to sell it to Daystar to bolster the district’s academic

resources.

“Daystar didn’t ask you to put the station up for sale,” Sherman

told board members at the Wednesday meeting. “It was put up there for

a reason. Once you put it on the market, you have to follow the law.”

In 2003, the district put KOCE up for sale to increase its

academic budget, which had fallen off in recent years. District

officials declared the foundation the highest bidder after it made an

offer of $8 million in cash and $24 million, interest-free, over the

next 30 years.

Daystar, which made a bid for $25 million in cash -- along with

another one for $40 million that was submitted a day after deadline

-- filed a lawsuit against the district, claiming that its cash offer

had made it the highest bidder. Though an Orange County Superior

Court ruled in favor of the district, Daystar won an appeal in June.

Attorney Cameron Totten, a colleague of Sherman’s, said he

believed that a court could order the foundation to transfer its

license to Daystar or back to the district. Bob Brown, the chair of

the KOCE-TV Foundation, dismissed the idea, saying that he would

fight along with the district to maintain the status quo.

“The court could dictate otherwise, but we’re going to do

everything in our power to keep it,” Brown said of the license.

Upon purchasing the station last year, the foundation made an

$8-million down payment that the district has largely spent, further

complicating the matter of transferring ownership.

Sherman has offered to settle out of court with the district and

to devote 20% of its airtime to “Real Orange” and other popular KOCE

programs, but Brown said he was not interested in the deal. Dahl, who

spoke about the offer with Sherman at the Wednesday meeting, admitted

that it might be an acceptable compromise.

“It isn’t my decision, but I would certainly recommend it if

someone could come up with a Solomon decision here that would satisfy

everybody’s needs,” Dahl said.

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at [email protected].