TINY MCE not saving inline styles properly

Question

I have a wordpress plugin that has a textarea using tinyMCE

    tinyMCE.init({

mode : 'textareas',
            theme : 'advanced',
            theme_advanced_buttons1 : 'forecolor,seperator,bold,italic',
            theme_advanced_buttons2 : '',
            theme_advanced_buttons3 : '',
elements : "editorContent",
width : "365",
height : "100",
theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "top",
    theme_advanced_toolbar_align : "left",
    theme_advanced_more_colors : false,
    inline_styles : true, 
});

If you set the color of the text it works great. When you save it however it comes out looking like

<span #ff6600;\="" style="">Hello world</span>

Anyone know how I can keep it from mangling the styles? Its not done in php later. It's something with the editor.