Sacramento officials could vote to cut budgets for public media, serving schools

Ishani Desai, The Sacramento Bee on Sep 17, 2025

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Excitement radiated from Isla Torres-Harrington while editing and piecing together short clips in her fifth grade class. Filmmaking, she reflected, involved much more work than she anticipated but brought her pure satisfaction by project completion.

Her class at Del Paso Manor Elementary School in Arden Arcade embedded media production into the class curriculum, allowing students to explore producing news broadcasts, documentaries and other videos.

“I feel like without (the class), especially my story, it kind of would have been forgotten and nobody would have really heard it,” said Isla, 11.

The class is supported by the nonprofit Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium and is almost entirely funded by a county government agency called the Sacramento Metropolitan Cable Television Commission. But on Friday, Aaron Heinrich, the nonprofit’s director, learned officials sought to cut more than 37% of its budget for the upcoming fiscal year and provide no funding for the 2026-27 budget cycle.

“What am I supposed to tell the teachers, the students, the superintendents, anybody else in the district, the parents, about what’s going to happen when this money goes away?” Heinrich asked.

The Sacramento Metropolitan Cable Television Commission, which contains representatives from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and council members from cities across the county, is set to hear a final budget presentation Wednesday. Other public media entities facing cuts include PBS’ KVIE, NPR-affiliate and Sacramento State-licensee Capital Public Radio and Access Sacramento.

The potential cuts to media comes as President Donald Trump signed a bill cutting $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit steering funds to PBS stations and NPR affiliates.

The commission was established in the 1980s as cable companies connected communities through its wires. Since many cable providers were constructed on public land, the companies collected an extra fee from its customers to provide compensation back to the government for using public land, said Sue Buske, president of The Buske Group, who has been working with local governments and community media for 45 years.

About 1% of these revenues must be used for public education, government equipment and facility purposes, or PEG funds, she said. The Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium and Access Sacramento are two nonprofit organizations primarily drawing money from these dollars.

The commission’s budget documents and staff report show reductions in revenue from cable companies but does not answer why these two nonprofits are facing cuts. Shawn Ayala, the Sacramento Metropolitan Cable Television Commission executive director, did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

Access Sacramento, which televises high school football games and teaches residents how to use media equipment, had a $134,578 budget in the last fiscal year from PEG revenues. For the 2025-26 fiscal year, this budget drops to $32,890, according to the agenda.

The nonprofit can change an entire person’s life by providing podcasting or video equipment, said Executive Director Donna Girot. It archives old video footage, boosts the local arts community, hosts a film festival and provides employees to work on blockbuster movies filming in the Sacramento region.

“We’re out there feeding good karma about Sacramento County out in the world,” Girot said.

If these budget cuts are approved, Girot anticipates shedding a majority of her nearly two dozen employees by October. The Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium could also reduce some of its seven-member team, Heinrich said.

Both nonprofit leaders said it’s no surprise revenues are decreasing as fewer customers buy cable television plans. A projection by county staff shows a $2 million drop for this upcoming fiscal year.

But the directors said they were both informed of these cuts on Friday, leaving barely enough time to plan ahead.

“There was no indication … that this was going to be this drastic,” Heinrich said. “We were never brought into any kind of discussion related to this. There was no collaboration.”

For Isla’s father, he saw his pre-teen daughter grow with confidence and express her creativity. The lessons she learned will resonate through her entire life, said Sean Harrington.

When Isla learned about the potential cuts, Harrington said, her heart was broken. But she didn’t only think about herself.

“All the other kids that waited … won’t have that opportunity,” he said.

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