Where the California Arts Council’s $13.6 Million Goes

The California Arts Council has 11 members who serve staggered four-year terms. The governor appoints nine, while the Assembly Speaker and the Senate Rules Committee each appoint one member. In its current fiscal year, the council will hand out $13.6 million to 1,015 organizations and to about 275 artists. (The remaining $3.1 million of its $16.7 million budget is for administration.)

But the biggest chunk of the California Arts Council’s money, some $6.9 million, is distributed through its Organizational Support program. Those nonprofit arts organizations who apply for grants from the Arts Council get the equivalent of a report card each year. The grade, a numerical ranking from 4 down to 1 (and 1 means don’t fund ), helps determine how much money an organization eventually receives. The amount generally must be matched by private donors.

Using complex Arts Council formulas, an organization’s budget helps determine how much it can apply for, thereby helping to weight things in favor of bigger groups. But even if an organization scores a perfect 4, it doesn’t get all the money it asks for; that is dependent on the number of applicants and the pot of available money.

This year small and mid-sized organizations who earned a 4 ranking received 65% of what they asked for, down to a cut off of 8% for those ranking 3-. Organizations ranking 2+ and below got nothing because, as a council staffer noted, “we ran out of money.”

Each August, the council votes on whether to accept or reject the rankings of peer-review panels in a particular artistic discipline such as music, dance or theater. Those members who are tied to a specific organization--like Arts Council chairman Joanne Kozberg, who is also on the board of the Music Center--abstain when particular grant comes up. Ranks and comments are distributed in a black-bound book the size of a telephone directory.

Large organizations like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with budgets of $1 million or more a year, are also reviewed by a separate “outreach” panel which determines how well the organization meets the needs of the community at large. The big budget organizations receive a grade average of their two scores--in outreach (to poorer communities, senior citizens, etc.) and artistic quality/administration.

Large budget organizations with a perfect 4 average, which none had, would have gotten 85% of their request this fiscal year. The Los Angeles Philharmonic got the council’s biggest grant at $306,380, or 65% of what it requested, even though its score was 4/3+. At $29 million, the Philharmonic’s budget--nearly twice as large the council’s own budget--is the highest arts budget in California.

About 70 organizations each received the Arts Council’s lowest grant of $1,000.

Of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the panel called it “a truly great ensemble,” adding: “The panel prefers not to speculate about (Andre) Previn’s departure, but will be interested in watching how the balance of power is worked out in the future between (executive vice president Ernest Fleischmann) and a new artistic director.”

However the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, which requested $9,500, scored 2+ and got nothing, received this comment: “The panel has become very worried about the musical health of this orchestra. It’s commendable that the music director wants to program challenging work, but it is musically irresponsible to program major pieces by Strauss, Stravinsky and Ravel when they are simply beyond the technical reach of the players.”

Some of the Art Council’s other grants programs are:

* $2.4 million for its “artists in residence program” employing performing and visual artists in schools, prisons, hospitals, and an artist fellowship program.

* $1.9 million for various statewide projects including the “state-local partnership” program in which the council awards grants to most of the 62 counties.

* $785,000 for its “performing arts touring and presenting” program, which supports “presentation of high quality performing artists to audiences throughout California especially those with no ready access, geographically or economically.”

* $650,000 for special multicultural grants.