ARTS PANEL DISPENSES SOME DISTRESSING NEWS

The California Arts Council and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department received unsettling news during the council’s regular meeting here this week. The news was that:

--Meetings of the council’s artists’ peer review panel, held in private for the 10 years the council has been in existence, must by state law be open to the public from now on.

--The Los Angeles department is getting less than half the $75,800 in state-local partnership funds it had requested from the council for 1986-87.

Council director Robert Reid reported all this Thursday to the state arts group and the public during the council’s meeting at the cavernous Theater Artaud. There, the council approved its first round of grants for fiscal year 1986-87, which starts July 1.

It approved $1,490,000 in State-Local Partnership Program grants, including $60,000 for multicultural or minority arts organizations.

Reid’s announcement that the peer-review panel sessions must be open to the public drew warnings that the candor of the meetings will probably become a thing of the past.

But he said he had been told that the sessions--where panelists discuss artists’ requests for grants--must comply with state law, specifically the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, which requires that state agencies conduct meetings in public.

He said he had been advised that review panels, though essentially subcommittees, qualify as meetings under the act. First made aware of the law by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Reid said he sought the advice of state Atty. Gen. John K. Van De Kamp’s office to avoid any violation of the act.

The result, he said, was a letter from that office defining the terms of the law and confirming his suspicion that council procedures regarding peer panels should “conform to existing codes.”

“There’s no question this will change the panel process--the chemistry within the panels,” Reid told council members.

In an interview later, he said he thought compliance with the open-meeting law “will uplift the level of the panels because the public will be involved.”

“The panelists--they won’t be so cliquish, where peers are saying things about their peers. But I know there is a difference of opinion here.”

Indeed there was, led by council member Bella Lewitzky, choreographer of the company that bears her name.

Traditionally, panels consist of artists from the field for which they make judgments. They are required to leave the room if their own company or organization comes up for grant consideration, Lewitzky explained.

“But now with open panel meetings,” she said, “it would take bravery beyond human capacity to candidly discuss an artist’s merit when that artist is present . . . and the process is sorely impeded if we can’t have free-flowing dialogue and debate.”

Paul Dresher, a Bay Area performing artist and former peer review panel member, said he thought the policy change was “inhibiting and subverting” and might impede his decisions to join future panels.

“The art community is very small,” he said “and a panelist is looking at the applications of his friends and colleagues. It would be impossible to be frank if you felt they are going to know exactly what you’ve said.”

Council chairman Stephen Goldstine dryly agreed that compliance with the act probably won’t “invite intensive candor,” but noted that the matter was “not for (council) vote.” He said there will “probably be an intensive review” of how the peer-panel meetings should be conducted under the new open-door policy.

During Thursday’s meeting, the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department--no representative was present--was given only $30,800 in State-Local Partnership Program funds for 1986-87. In contrast, the Los Angeles County Music and Performing Arts Commission got $100,200, only $10,000 less than it requested.

In an interview, Gloria Segal, program manager of the State-Local Partnership Program, said her panel recommended to the council that the city department be denied the $75,800 it had requested because of “bad re-granting procedures” with past partnership funds.

Segal said the department had neglected to disperse funds “in excess of $150,000” in grants it had been receiving since 1980, and that once it did begin granting the money to artists, its own peer review panel was not “broadly representative” of the Los Angeles arts community and had come under City Council scrutiny for alleged conflict of interest violations.

“The (State-Local Partnership Program) panel decided that the Cultural Affairs Department needed to be sent a message that state funds, particularly State-Local Partnership funds, were to be taken seriously and spent in a way that demonstrated a credible and equitable process,” Segal said. “We felt the department’s behavior reflected poorly on the entire State-Local Partnership Program.”

The department’s $30,800 award, Segal said, was for a proposed 1987 folk arts festival to be administered by the city. The meeting was not attended by Fred Croton, the department’s general manager and recently the focus of a intensive investigation of the Cultural Affairs Department’s personnel practices.

Goldstine expressed optimism that the $13.8 million budget the council is requesting for the coming fiscal year will be approved by Gov. Deukmejian when he decides the new state budget. The council’s current budget is $12.7 million.