Riley Asks Study of O.C. Arts to Assess Needs : Culture: The findings could bring about a significant change in the Board of Supervisors’ historical hands-off policy.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley has asked county officials to conduct a study of the arts in Orange County. “The county has not played an active role (in the arts) in the past, and the supervisor has decided to evaluate what kind of role it should play in the future,” said Courtney Wiercioch, Riley’s executive assistant.

“We don’t have an arts policy . . . so we’re trying to gather information and determine if we should have a policy and if so what it should be,” Wiercioch said.

The study, to be conducted by the county administrative office, probably will be completed by late February, Wiercioch said.

Wiercioch said Riley requested the study in response to the “momentum” of the local arts scene. She cited the $73-million Orange County Performing Arts Center, construction of an $18-million theater at UC Irvine, and a 1,500-seat performing arts hall proposed for South County.

Historically, as Wiercioch said, county support of the arts has been somewhere between “slim and none.”

In 1980, the Board of Supervisors designated the Orange County Arts Alliance, an organization meant to promote and support local arts, as the county’s official arts planning agency. But the board never funded the alliance, which dissolved after 14 years last December without having achieved its goals.

Supervisors have made, and still make, individual grants to arts groups with money from their personal discretionary budgets or revenue-sharing funds. And last year, the board established a task force to study the possibility of an art program at John Wayne Airport. Supervisors are scheduled to vote in January on the task force’s recommendations to create an ambitious ongoing art program at the airport’s new terminal.

However, none of the county’s $2.9-billion budget is earmarked for the arts. By contrast, Los Angeles County has set aside $35 million for arts projects this year.

The study requested by Riley will address funding and will analyze the various ways other counties support the arts, financial or otherwise, as well as existing municipal arts agencies in and outside of Orange County, Wiercioch said.

Riley’s request for the study has won praise yesterday from the local arts community.

Martin Weil, an arts management consultant and director of the ad hoc Committee to Form an Orange County Arts Council, said its members are “strongly supportive of this step.” The committee of 27 local arts officials is working to establish a countywide arts support organization to take up where the alliance left off.