Deukmejian Calls for 19% Cut in State Arts Council Budget

Gov. George Deukmejian has proposed a 19% budget reduction for the state agency that provides grants and technical assistance to artists and nonprofit arts organizations.

The governor’s budget released Tuesday proposes a $3-million cut in the California Arts Council’s current $15.6-million budget. Deukmejian’s $12,610,000 proposal for fiscal year 1989-90 marks the largest reduction in the council’s budget that the governor has recommended since he took office in 1983.

The matter must now go before the Democratic-controlled state Legislature. If passed and signed into law, the new budget goes into effect on July 1.

“Obviously this (would be) a tremendous hardship for the field,” said council Chairman Harvey Stearn. “Our job will be to effect the cuts that have the least possible impact on” artists and organizations that receive council support.

The council had recommended to the governor a $2.3 million increase to its current budget, which includes about $1 million in federal funds, said council director and Deukmejian-appointee Robert H. Reid.

Defending the governor’s action, Reid added that Deukmejian made his reduction proposal “without any malice” toward the council and that the governor’s hand was forced largely by Proposition 98, which guarantees public schools roughly 40% of the state’s budget.

The GOP-dominated 11-member council has agreed unanimously--if the proposal becomes law--to trim $2.8 million from its 10 grant programs (totaling $12.6 million) and the rest from council operating expenses, Stearn said. The cuts will be made “across the board,” and no programs will be eliminated, he said.

“This preserves all the programs and keeps the possibility of restoring them back to previous levels at a later date,” he said.

“I believe that the council is probably doing the best thing in its plan to execute the cuts,” said Susan Hoffman, director of the California Confederation of the Arts, an arts advocacy organization. “But, holy cow, $3 million is a whole lot of arts funding.

“Council funding is already so incredibly competitive,” Hoffman added. “Within the organizational grant category, one out of three applicants now gets funding, and for artists fellowships, it’s one out of 10.”

Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum, agreed that the budget reduction could be “crippling.” Noting the recent creation of the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts, which is slated to add about $20 million annually to the city’s arts budget, Davidson said: “We are at too important a junction in the history of the development of the arts in the state to take a step back now.”

Early in his administration, Deukmejian reduced the council’s budget by more than $2 million during a budget shortfall when all state agencies suffered heavy cuts, a council spokeswoman said. Otherwise, the governor has increased council funding annually, by at least $800,000 and as much as nearly $2 million, she said.

Last week, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee reported that California will be $1.5 billion short of what it will need to adequately finance state programs in its 1989-90 budget.

California currently ranks 35th nationwide in per capita arts funding, according to the Washington D.C.-based National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.