NEA BUDGET: WEIGHING THE OPTIONS

Walking alone down the corridor of the Rayburn House Office Building at the end of a long day’s testimony on next year’s National Endowment for the Arts budget, Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.) was asked about the eventual outcome.

“I have no idea,” replied Yates, chairman of the appropriations interior subcommittee that handles the arts budget. Then he added softly: “Everything is chaos right now.”

The 76-year-old chairman from Chicago’s North Side, a longtime advocate of substantial support for the arts and humanities, has a multitude of options. For fiscal ‘87, which begins Oct. 1, 1986, he could keep funding in the range of this year’s level ($165.6 million before Gramm-Rudman-Hollings’ first budget-balancing cutback of 4.3% to $158.5 million). He could go above the present level. He could follow the Reagan Administration request and trim back to $144.9 million. Or, as he threw into the hopper at one point on Tuesday, cut even further.

For five years, Yates, who has chaired the subcommittee since 1975, has substantially raised arts appropriations over what have been sought by the White House. Since this is the first year of the application of the Gramm-Rudman law, which requires a balanced budget by Oct. 1, 1990, Yates says there are no answers yet.

“We don’t know what Gramm-Rudman is going to do. We just don’t know at the moment what the deficit is likely to be. We don’t know whether Gramm-Rudman will be sustained as constitutional by the Supreme Court. . . .

“We don’t know what the pressures of other programs will be,” Yates continued, “what the military will be, what other social programs will be, so when you ask me what will happen I just don’t know. . . .”

Asked for his gut feeling on the arts budget, Yates hinted that “Congress has always sustained the arts budget, and I believe it will continue to do so.”

At a level higher than Reagan’s? “Again, depending on what happens in the rest of the budget, we hope to get a higher than Reagan (result),” Yates said. He declined to speculate how much higher.

Meanwhile, arts advocates came away from Tuesday’s hearing, pronouncing themselves pleased with the course of testimony.

“He’s trying to build a case for increased funding,” said Anne Murphy, executive director of the American Arts Alliance, the nation’s principal arts advocacy group, which represents about 350 professional nonprofit organizations in theater, dance, music and museums.

Murphy said the case was enhanced by certain remarks that Yates was able to get into the record. She cited a statement by Patrick Smith, who heads the endowment’s opera/musical theater program that the state of opera companies is “precarious.” And Murphy thought it was important that Ed Martinson, who runs the theater program, talked about how money from the endowment generates private money. “I think the message (from Yates) is, ‘Don’t become complacent.’ We’ve got to work for it.”

“Yates always manages to draw out information he needs to make a case for his fellow congressmen,” said Peter Zeisler, executive director of Theater Communications Group.

“It seems we’re trying to circumvent the core of the problem,” he added. “You heard Martinson talk about the ‘fragility’ of theater, and Smith about the ‘precariousness’ of opera and musical theater. It’s ludicrous to think all the arts will not be hurt by any kind of a cut. Both Congress and the Administration seek visibility of arts programs in the hope that funding comes from other sectors. Nobody is concerned about the careful nurturing of arts institutions, which takes years and decades.”

Tuesday’s hearing featuring testimony from National Endowment for the Arts officials, including Chairman Frank Hodsoll and various program directors, was the first step for the arts in the long budget process. Although the NEA is an independent federal agency, its chairman is a presidential appointee and invariably follows the Administration’s budget policy. Meanwhile, program directors, no matter what their individual political affiliations, invariably follow the chairman. They try not to disagree in public.

Despite the somber budget mood, Yates began the NEA hearing on a relatively easy note, quickly establishing rapport with the program directors. Looking out into the room, he spotted some familiar faces: “Mr. (A.B.) Spellman (Expansion Arts), yah, it’s like old times. Miss (Bess) Hawes (Folk Arts), old times . . . Mr. (Ed) Birdwell from music. You’re new, aren’t you? We’ll make you old.”

For most of the day, Yates concentrated on the program directors. He had already drawn from Hodsoll that prior to the passage of Gramm-Rudman, the NEA chairman had recommended to the Office of Management and Budget the sum of $170.6 million for the NEA--$5 million more than the current pre-Gramm-Rudman budget.

At times, Yates’ questions seemed to have more punch than the answers. Noting that the NEA’s dance budget would slip from the pre-Gramm-Rudman figure of $9 million for the current fiscal year to $7.6 million, Yates wanted to know whether the difference means anything. When acting dance director Kathy Brown noted that the NEA would continue to support the best, Yates responded: “In other words, lesser companies will fall by the wayside?”

Spellman, whose expansion arts program primarily funds minority arts organizations, noted that cuts would mean they would “continue to support the best of the old” and still bring in “new blood,” but the funding process would “become more competitive for those in the middle.”

Asked by Yates whether folk arts received enough money, Hawes, who has directed the NEA program since 1976, replied that “all of us can think of very good things to do with money that comes down the pike. Like the rest of government, we’re making do with what we can, spreading it out . . . “

Hawes, a former professor of anthropology at Cal State Northridge, also noted that because of NEA interest, 45 states now have folk arts programs of their own. “The strategy worked extremely well,” she said, and wondered “whether or not there would be some impact from Gramm-Rudman on state monies.”

Birdwell estimated that should the cutbacks for fiscal 1987 take effect, major orchestras could expect to receive about $275,000 instead of the current $290,000 in matching grants. The Reagan budget would scale the music program back from the fiscal ’86 $15.3 million (pre-Gramm-Rudman cut) to $13.1 million.

An unexpected witness was Don Drucker, who manages the radio division under the media arts program. Of the $13 million allocated to media arts in fiscal 1986 (pre-Gramm-Rudman), Drucker’s division received $1.6 million; in the new budget, media arts would be chopped back to $10.2 million. When Yates asked him if he needed more money, Drucker began cautiously, “If you have more money, you spend it . . .

However, when Yates asked what he would do with more money, Drucker’s face lit up as he spoke about “areas of presentations of drama and literature” and using radio as “a breakthrough vehicle for docudramas . . . “

But the question Yates must still answer for himself is the one he asked Hodsoll early on: “At what point and at what level of funding, do you support excellence in the arts?”

On March 19, the public witnesses will have their day. Last year Marsha Norman, who won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “ ‘night, Mother,” testified. This year, those scheduled to champion increased funding for the arts include Robert Joffrey (of the Joffrey Ballet), pianist Lorin Hollander, Harry Parker, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, and William Wingate, executive managing director of Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group.

The public witnesses also will speak before the House subcommittee on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Institute for Museum Services, a $21-million agency that the Reagan Administration has tried to demolish since it came into power. By federal standards, the Institute for Museum Services is a tiny agency. It provides operating expenses to art, science and historical museums, botanical gardens and zoos, for up to 10% of their budgets. On March 20, the Senate appropriations interior subcommittee will hear agency testimony on the NEH budget. Museum Services appointees will testify before the House subcommittee on April 14.

On April 15, the Senate subcommittee, chaired by Sen. James McClure (R-Ida.), will hear agency witnesses from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute for Museum Services. Two of the three authors of the budget-balancing law--Sens. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) serve on McClure’s subcommittee. There are no public witnesses scheduled to testify before the Senate subcommittee.

On April 17, representatives of the Congressional Arts Caucus, a 200-member body led by Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.), are also expected to testify before the House subcommittee.

One of Yates’ more pointed questions Tuesday was directed to Drew Oliver, who runs NEA’s museum program. In more of a statement than a question, he asked, “You have any opinion about how valuable IMS is?”