KAHULUI – The board of Akaku: Maui Community Television has reached an agreement on sharing revenues from cable television franchise fees with the state Department of Education and Maui Community College.

The agreement reached on April 7 after a lengthy dispute among the parties was forced in part by a bill pending in the Legislature that would have mandated a sharing of the fees. The bill for now appears to be unneeded, but the controversy is likely to continue to simmer as Sean McLaughlin, Akaku executive director, argues that the agreement will shred the agency’s budget and suggests the Legislature should support the public access programming provided by Akaku.

McLaughlin said the agreement means Akaku will lose about $400,000 of its $1 million annual budget this year. The public-access television operator receives about $700,000 each year from cable fees. It also receives grants and other income.

“We’re still working out what else it means,” McLaughlin said Friday afternoon. “We’re the only public access television organization in the state to be subject to such an agreement.”

The agreement calls for Akaku to pay $132,000 immediately to MCC to fund accredited educational services the college says it has already spent for televised programs for students in the expectation of receiving Akaku funds.

Akaku will also give 25 percent of its cable television funding to MCC and the state Department of Education’s Maui District office. That money garnered from Oceanic Time Warner Cable, the cable television franchisee in Maui County, will be divided evenly between the two entities. An additional 8 percent of Akaku’s funding will go directly to the DOE’s Maui District.

The agreement calls for MCC and the DOE to “explore in good faith the potential interest among private accredited schools in educational programming cable television.”

McLaughlin and other Akaku proponents charge the legislative action was the result of efforts of Wailuku developer Everett Dowling, a former member of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents and a target of some programming that has appeared over Akaku’s public access channels.

Dowling said he was actively in support of legislation that forced the issue on the cable franchise fees that are designated for public access, education and government.

“I’m proud of my involvement. We don’t have enough for our schools. The schools are underequipped, and they are responsible for educating our children,” he said.

The move to restore franchise-fee funding to educational programming was just one of several goals he had set for schools on Maui, Dowling said. He said he also lobbied for funding for Iao School for improvements to Wells Park and to build a Kihei High School.

He did not succeed in most of his lobbying efforts, he said, but he felt the demand to fund educational access was justified.

“There are people who talk of freedom of speech for what they are producing on Akaku. But if you have a view different from Sean McLaughlin, you suddenly are not entitled to freedom of speech,” he said.

He said that Olelo, the public access corporation on Oahu, has turned over 25 percent of the fees it receives to the Department of Education since its inception, and there have been no conflicts.

Akaku is a nonprofit agency designated by the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to receive 3 percent of the annual gross revenues from the franchised cable operator on Maui. The franchise fee is designated for broadcasts over five cable channels set aside for public, educational and government access.

Akaku currently manages three channels, including the “Visions” Channel 53 that carries programming from county, state and federal meetings and events. Under contracts with the county, Akaku produces live and taped broadcasts of meetings of the County Council and county boards and commissions.

MCC operates cable Channel 55 with programming that includes distance-learning classes for students in outlying areas of the county, while the Department of Education has cable Channel 56 for its distance-learning classes.

DOE administrators and teachers said the renewed funding for educational access to cable television will reverse the lagging use of the cable channel.

“We can now fix a lot of our equipment, upgrade it to digital,” said Ken Nomura, Maui District complex superintendent.

He said he was not familiar with the issues that resulted in the decision to reduce funding for educational access, but “we had been cut off for about four or five years.”

A studio for educational programming was set up at Maui High School but has only limited use because the equipment is outdated.

“We’re hoping not only to upgrade and improve the equipment at Maui High, but I know at one point we were hoping to open on the Lahaina side,” Nomura said. “But that was when funds were trimmed.”

Maui District telecommunications specialist Oscar Matsui said the Maui High studio was set up originally with franchise fee funds with the expectation that it would produce more distance-learning programs for the schools.

He said the studio is used now to broadcast advanced placement calculus classes to outlying high school campuses that would otherwise not be able to provide the class for small numbers of students.

“The idea of this is we have a lot of schools throughout the state that have maybe just a few kids that qualify for AP calculus, and that does not justify a teaching position on the school campus,” he said.

But with no new funds, he said, “most of our equipment is basically outdated, number one, and number two, it all breaks down quite often and at this time we don’t have funds to repair.”

Maui High teacher Clint Gima said he has been provided with equipment for classes in video production because Maui High is designated a Science and Technology Learning Center. But that is equipment for his classroom, not for the distance learning studio that was to be funded by cable franchise fees.

The learning center program supports both in-class and extracurricular activities in science, including the school’s Project EAST teams.

“I actually have better equipment than them, ever since their budget was cut,” he said. “We can’t use their equipment any more because it’s all analog.”

MCC Chancellor Clyde Sakamoto said the franchise fee funds will support the college’s expanding distance-learning activities, providing cable television classes to students in Hana and on Molokai and Lanai who might not be able to afford attending classes in Kahului.

He said the college staff was able to collaborate with the Akaku board in reaching the agreement to restore funding to educational services on cable.

The agreement, a copy of which was delivered to McLaughlin on April 15, was signed by Akaku board Chairman Myles Inokuma, MCC Vice Chancellor Florence Wiger and state Schools Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto.

The agreement also calls for Akaku to amend its bylaws to stipulate that four of the 15 members on the board of directors be “education seats” to be filled by Maui Community College and the state Department of Education. The education members would have full voting rights. MCC and the DOE had nonvoting members on the board previously.

Akaku has said MCC was unable to deliver a performance report satisfactory to Akaku auditors and as a result the funds to the college were cut.

Under the agreement, MCC and the DOE will be required to report directly to the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

The agreement apparently protects Akaku’s noncable funding. At one point, the educators were requesting a third of Akaku’s capital funds and a third of any lease profits Akaku will receive if it goes ahead with a plan to buy the building it occupies.

The Akaku controversy, including the proposed legislation aimed specifically at Akaku, drew state and national attention as a free-speech issue. The Hawaii Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists said the legislation was “an unjustified raid” on a “well-working public access organization.”

Thursday an Internet “media action alert” issued by Democracy Now resulted in more than a dozen e-mail messages from around the world in support of Akaku.

McLaughlin said he understood that the Akaku bill in the Legislature had been gutted. He said it would help if the Legislature could replace the $400,000 Akaku will lose this year due to the agreement.

Ron Youngblood can be reached at . Edwin Tanji can be reached at .