ART GROUPS SEEK TO BLUNT BUDGET SCISSORS : State, Federal Fiscal Proposals Cause Usual Reactions of Anger and Frustration, Plus Hints of Friction Within California Arts Community

With the emergence in recent days of federal and state budget proposals for the coming fiscal year, California’s arts community appears to have been dealt a one-two punch. First came Gov. George Deukmejian’s annual budget message a week ago Friday; then Wednesday the rumblings from Gramm-Rudman, the nation’s new budget-balancing law.

Their combined impact is bringing the usual reactions of anger and frustration--as well as confusion and hints of friction within the state’s arts community. Last year’s rosy promises of substantial increases for multicultural artists and arts organizations could well become the focal point of this year’s concerns.

Saying the arts community is “going to have to be really organized,” Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a staunch supporter of increased arts funding, lashed out at President Reagan’s friends and supporters, movie stars and others whom she did not name. “For them to wrap their arms around the person who is hurting the arts is contradictory, and they are going to have to be called on it,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Nevertheless Waters, chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee that funds the arts, said she has “high expectations” that an organized arts community can “place pressure on both Ronald Reagan and (Gov.) George Deukmejian about their lack of support for the arts.” As far as the Democratic-controlled Legislature is concerned, she added, “I can guarantee . . . we’re not going to roll over.”

The fiscal issue began in Sacramento when Deukmejian essentially recommended freezing the California Arts Council budget--with the exception of $148,000 for cost-of-living salary adjustments. Overall the governor’s increase amounts to about 1%--from the current $12,694,000 to $12,878,000. Both numbers include federal funding.

The only scheduled program increase for fiscal 1986-87 beginning July 1 is $12,000 in federal money for arts-organization touring in California. Under Gramm-Rudman, designed to eventually eliminate the nation’s gargantuan budget deficit, a smidgen will undoubtedly be lopped off that too.

Meanwhile Deukmejian held at this year’s funding level the budgetary line-item for multicultural artists and organizations--at $164,000. Last summer the Arts Council had voted to recommend to the governor’s Department of Finance a net increase of $1 million.

“I’m very much afraid that the impact of Gramm-Rudman is not reflected (in the governor’s budget),” June Gutfleisch, executive director of the California Confederation of the Arts, the arts advocacy organization, said early last week. “With a President who does not give the arts high priority and a governor who is not giving high priority, I’m terribly, terribly worried.”

Sen. Henry Mello (D-Watsonville), chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Arts, noted that the arts budget was in the $12 million neighborhood in fiscal 1980-81 and asserted: “In real dollars we are slipping backward. I don’t think we can afford to do that very long before the cultural environment erodes.”

Then, out of Washington came Gramm-Rudman.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget said the current fiscal year cutback for the National Endowment for the Arts under the new budget law would amount to 4.3%--the same as all other unprotected domestic programs. For the NEA the loss is $7 million. NEA chairman Frank Hodsoll insisted that implementation of the cuts will “not significantly hurt the endowment’s ability to support the arts.”

At the same time the Associated Press quoted “knowledgeable sources” as saying that for fiscal 1987 President Reagan would seek to cut the federal arts budget by 12.5% from the current $165.7 million to about $145 million. (Ironically when Reagan had sought last year to trim back the endowment’s budget by 11.7% to $144 million Congress restored the cuts.)

Hodsoll’s office declined comment on the report.

In fiscal 1985, which ended Sept. 30, California’s artists and arts organizations as well as the Arts Council received $14.6 million in matching, challenge and other grants. How much would be lost to the state on a 12.5% cut would take a micro-computer chip to determine, because the cuts would have to be made by disciplines, such as dance, music and visual arts.

The new Reagan budget message goes to Congress early next month; first hearings on the matter are scheduled for March 4 by the House Appropriations subcommittee under Rep. Sidney Yates (D-Ill.) that handles the arts budget. Like other congressional arts supporters, Yates is reacting with caution. He said it was premature to comment on Reagan’s proposals for next year until the wider effects could be reviewed.

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), saying he regrets any reduction in the NEA budget, noted that “arts funding is not exempt from budget pressure, but I would like to see the arts portion in the context of the President’s entire budget.”

In Sacramento Paul Minicucci, legislative analyst for the Joint Legislative Committee on the Arts, appeared to take a similar stance. If the cuts were evenly distributed, it would be hard to argue against them, he said. Then it wouldn’t simply be Reagan “picking on the arts. I want to see what Reagan does with the rest of the budget.”

Jonathan Katz, executive director of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, termed the cutbacks “a significant loss at a time when the costs of providing for the arts continue to escalate.” Asked if he expected any organizations to go under, Katz replied: “I would expect the cutbacks will most likely effect middle-sized organizations, or emerging, experimental, minority and perhaps rural arts organizations that are still trying to establish a broad base of support.”

Meanwhile, this weekend in Los Angeles Southern California’s representatives to the Art Council’s Multicultural Advisory Panel are wrestling with the impact of Deukmejian’s spare cupboard.

Oscar Maciel, director of the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco and panel spokesman, said the multicultural leadership must formulate new strategies. He talks about getting direct support from major business people. “If beer companies can have a special market share,” he suggests, then perhaps they and other businesses can be persuaded to fund multicultural arts organizations. He also mentions lobbying the governor.

“But if no monies are allocated beyond the $164,000 we will try to obtain the money within the agency itself,” Maciel said, specifying that funding could come from the state-local partnership program that funds local (usually county) arts agencies. “They have a little bit over a million; we feel that’s what we would need.”

Gutfleisch, meanwhile, is circulating a memo to council members, her own confederation board and to the multicultural panel recommending restoration of the original $500,000 line item to multicultural artists and organizations. (An additional $500,000 had been recommended under another program.)

“Should the necessary budget augmentation not be forthcoming (from the governor),” she wrote, “ . . . shift enough funds from its (the council’s) Support to Prominent Organizations and State and Local Partnerships to raise the multicultural arts program to $500,000 for ‘86-87.”

Maciel, however, hesitates to recommend taking any money from--and crossing swords with--the so-called prominent organizations, including the San Francisco Opera and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose budgets are over $1 million.

“We certainly don’t want to antagonize them,” he said. “We would like for them to meet with us and let us help each other and share resources. We are doing that already in the multicultural community. It’s not necessarily money (we need). If the Mission Cultural Center needs an administrator, how about them sharing some of their expertise with us?

“Rather than killing two birds with one stone,” Maciel pleaded, “we will feed two birds with one seed.”