Public Access

Public access stations airing several local religious offerings You might not have noticed it in the listings, but a service at South River's All Hallows Episcopal Church was on television. All Hallows is one of several religious organizations taking advantage of cable access. An All Hallows Sunday service was videotaped and broadcast twice last month, to begin what the parish rector hopes will become regular appearances on Anne Arundel Community Television's public access channels. Lillian Armstrong, a member of a parish video-production team, said All Hallows plans to tape its Christmas Eve midnight Mass, and services Jan. 28 and Feb. 28, for subsequent Sunday broadcasts on Comcast's Channel 20 and Millennium Digital's Channel 99. The public access channels are used the rest of week for programming by the county government and community college.

Baltimore's 19-member City Council will meet tonight for the last time under a structure that dates back 82 years. A newly configured, smaller council will be sworn in Thursday and begin its work that night. Between tonight's meeting and Thursday's swearing-in, seven incumbents will be packing up their offices and rejoining the ranks of voters who last sent them to City Hall in 1999. "This is the only time in my memory where seven members are leaving," Councilman Robert W. Curran said.

The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are beautiful, but you can't get to them easily. Only 2 percent of the Maryland shoreline of the Chesapeake offers public access. "Along the Anacostia River," says environmentalist Robert Boone, "there are only two boat ramps along eight miles of tidal river." The Potomac, "other than along the C&O Canal tow path, does not have much access either." On the Eastern Shore, there is a shortage of waterside parks and boat ramps. Veteran kayaker Clarence "Doc" Kuntz points out that there is "very little Talbot County shoreline open to the public.

Each year since 1954, the Department of Natural Resources has performed a survey of juvenile fin fish in the state's tidal rivers and the Chesapeake Bay, and the first round of the survey this year has produced encouraging results.The young of the year index for rockfish after one round is 14.5, well above the long-term average of 9.5.The index is an average count of young of the year taken in each haul of a 100-foot net at 22 locations around the tidewater area.Yellow perch counted also indicated good spawning success.

Leonard J. Kerpelman OCCUPATION Civic iconoclast, producer of a public access television show, former lawyer in the news Kerpelman has asked city officials to appoint him as a "substitute objector" to revive a lawsuit dropped by a preservationist group against Mercy Medical Center to prevent it from razing 1820s rowhouses for an expansion. career highlights Kerpelman, a longtime Mount Vernon resident and lawyer, represented atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair in the landmark 1963 Supreme Court case that outlawed organized prayer in public schools.

A man in a trench coat and a houndstooth hat sits at a desk, scribbling in a folder marked "Top Secret." A drum roll plays in the background."As I begin my mission," a voice-over starts, "I realize I must find out everything so that people can be told. That's the American Way and my way. For, you see, I am the County Spy."The man then leaps up and clasps a briefcase to his wrist with a pair of handcuffs. He darts through a tunnel, sprints across a barren field, climbs over boulders, unlocks a safe and, finally, splays himself across a brick wall and stares wide-eyed at the camera.

The name of Robert G. Pepersack, county sheriff and host of "Anne Arundel County's Most Wanted," was misspelled in the cover story about stars of public access cable television in Sunday's Sun Magazine.+ The Sun regrets the errors.Hollywood made big bucks off "Wayne's World" by selling the notion that public-access television is inhabited mostly by people who like nothing better than to sit around doing dumb stuff on television.That notion could be downright insulting if you happen to be one of the thousands of people across America involved in public access, a medium that aspires to give a voice to people who otherwise wouldn't be heard.

An online service profiling every physician in the state is expected to go forward this summer despite dying support in Annapolis for two bills that would have greatly expanded the amount of information available to consumers.The bills will be grouped with several other health-related proposals that legislators want to study in more detail, said Del. Ronald A. Guns, a Cecil County Democrat who heads the committee that is shelving both bills.This session, the General Assembly faced a raft of proposals to tighten regulations on managed health care and provide consumers with better, quicker information to help in choosing doctors.

NEVER underestimate the healthy effects of sunlight. It is good for the human body -- and for governing bodies.Carroll County's new board of commissioners must embrace that philosophy of openness to restore its public credibility. Secret dealings and hidden agendas, a shameful blemish on the previous three-member board, are unacceptable.Public access to and participation in government deliberations are especially critical in a system where the commissioners serve executive and legislative functions, diluting the checks and balances of separate branches.

It's not often that television viewers flip their remotes and see an accountant, an engineer, a mayor and a lawyer -- all African-American men -- casually chatting about history, religion, hobbies and their dreams."