State arts funding: the sad truth - News

Dance Magazine, June, 2003 by Martha Ullman West

In Oregon, we call it clearcutting--the practice of chopping down large portions of timber forest with no thought for future growth or the environmental, economic, or aesthetic consequences of eliminating a valuable natural resource.

In March, as governors and legislators struggled to balance their budgets in a time of economic downturn and reduced revenues, clear-cutting of state arts agencies--their complete elimination--was on the table in Oregon, New Jersey, Missouri, and Arizona.

According to Ed Dickey, who heads the National Endowment for the Arts' partnership program, which distributes matching funds to state arts agencies, "arts in the states will not survive in effective form without state support. It's still relatively early in the process," he said, but "it's critical to maintain the infrastructure of support so it is there when times get better. Once it has been eliminated, it's not easy to get back."

While the majority of arts agencies in the country--and every state has had one since the early 1970s--are not marked for the budgetary chainsaw, forty-two states, according to the Los Angeles Times, cut their arts budgets this fiscal year. "Arts grants can be very tempting to legislators," commented George Urban, director of Advocacy for Artserve Michigan, a nonprofit agency that supports the arts, in an article in the Detroit Free Press about a proposal to cut $307,000 from the state's allocation for arts support. (Michigan legislators were later tempted to cut arts grants much more--from $23.5 million to $11.8 million.)

While arts appropriations, in most instances, are a minuscule line item in state budgets (one-tenth of 1 percent of the Idaho budget is allocated to the Idaho Commission for the Arts, which is anticipating 2 to 5 percent in further cuts, according to the commission's Maria Estrada), many state officials are yielding to the temptation to cut them. New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, a known arts supporter, chose to eliminate state support for arts and culture to help reduce a $5 billion budget shortfall. Under his plan, the State Council on the Arts would be disbanded and $18 million in grants to 700 arts groups would be discontinued after this year, as well as an annual $10 million contribution to the state's Cultural Trust. In New Jersey, as they do everywhere, arts advocates have made the case that the arts not only help the economy, they can revitalize a depressed city, as the creation of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center has done in Newark. State officials are unconvinced: With 70,000 people being taken off the health rolls, Micah Rasmussen, McGreevey's press secretary, said on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, "the state is at the point where they can't make the investment."

Kansas City Ballet Executive Director Jeffrey J. Bentley is not sanguine about the elimination of the Missouri Arts Council and the potential loss of $50,000, a grant that is less than half of the $112,000 the company received two years ago. While the company, with no debt, a $3.4 million endowment, and a cash reserve of over $1 million, is, by his admission, in better shape than many others of similar size, he is nevertheless trimming its budget. "[Our] cushion can disappear in a blink if we are not careful about expenses," Bentley said last spring. "We would be doing it if the arts council was healthy. The issue is all of our resource segments are currently arrayed against us. Ticket buyers aren't buying, donors are waiting, funders are thinning out, endowments are earning less."

In Oregon, where prisoners are being released early onto the streets of Portland and the indigent are losing their prescription coverage under the nationally recognized Oregon Health Plan, the state legislature eliminated the general fund appropriation for the Oregon Arts Commission, and only some creative use of existing funds was keeping its office open until the fiscal year ends in June. These included unspent NEA funds, monies from a Ford Family Foundation arts education grant, and management fees earned by facilitating the 1 Percent for Art in Public Places programs.

While Governor Ted Kulongoski has designated $2.1 million of general fund monies for the commission for 2003-05, down 13 percent from the previous allocation, the legislature could dispose of that rather quickly. The commission will survive if the legislature doesn't ax it in budgetary hearings. "What is happening in Oregon is not about the arts," OAC Executive Director Christine D'Arcy says. "There is a severe imbalance between available revenues and ongoing spending, and we are a tiny part of the equation lumped with other parts of government that are not human services, public safety, and corrections. It's not possible to balance the state's budget on the 20 percent that is for discretionary programs."

It is also not possible for the state's dance companies to balance their budgets with OAC funding. The Eugene Ballet Company, which has a budget of $1.5 million, received $10,422 for operating expenses in an industry grant from the OAC last year and $5,730 for arts education leadership. "I'm expecting a cut," Managing Director Riley Grannan said in March. "It's not a lot of money, but everything helps." Fellowships to individual artists were eliminated early on. If the OAC survives, those fellowships don't come around again until 2005.