State Council Assails O.C. Arts Funding : County government: One angry official blames a “libertarian mentality” for the lack of financial support for a local arts council.

A state arts advisory panel Thursday denounced the Orange County Board of Supervisors for its reluctance to commit county funds to a local arts council. One California Arts Council official criticized what she called the county’s “libertarian mentality” toward government funding of the arts and said the private funding of the county’s Performing Arts Center “could be one of the worst things that ever happened to the arts in the state.”

The comments came as the CAC panel was throwing its support behind an ad hoc committee of 27 Orange County arts leaders, recommending that the committee serve as the county’s official arts representative, or “state-local partner,” until a permanent local council can be formed.

Orange County is one of only six counties in the state without a state-local partnership and is therefore ineligible to receive state and federal grants for redistribution to local arts groups. One local arts official estimates that this is costing the county up to $80,000 a year in money for arts programs.

Earlier this week, the county supervisors instructed various county agencies to study the feasibility of creating a local arts council and sanctioned the ad hoc committee’s efforts to serve as an interim state-local partner, but they refused to consider how the council might be funded. A county administrative office study had recommended allocating up to $50,000, a fraction of the $285,200 initially recommended by the ad hoc committee. County support of the arts historically has been minimal.

Wednesday night, the state panel recommended that the ad hoc committee, which has been meeting since last year, receive $12,500 in seed money for a full-time council. The state will vote June 1 on the panel’s recommendations.

The $12,500 would “reward the committee for what it has already done and say to local government that we want the art community’s voice to be heard,” said Gloria Woodlock, the CAC’s state-local program manager.

But beyond that, she said, the panel wants to send a “very strong message to local government in Orange County that it needs to support the arts financially.”

Woodlock noted that last year all 51 state-local partners in California received either municipal or county funding.

Woodlock told the panelists that a large part of the problem is “Orange County’s libertarian mentality.” For instance, she said, every time the supervisors are asked to fund the arts, they point to the $73.3-million Orange County Performing Arts Center, saying, “Well, they did that with private money.”

The Center’s funding “could be one of the worst things that ever happened to the arts in the state as far as local government support of the arts goes,” Woodlock said.

(Reached for comment, Center President Thomas R. Kendrick said his board and staff endorse creation of a publicly assisted arts council in Orange County. “We, of course, are extremely proud of the unprecedented private support demonstrated by this community for the Center in its construction and operation. But that certainly does not mean that we oppose government support for the arts,” Kendrick said.)

Panelist Lance Linares, director of the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz, recommended making any CAC state-local funding to Orange County contingent on a guarantee of county money for a local council. “I’m afraid if we don’t make it uncomfortable for the supervisors, they’ll never give any money,” he said, adding that as a countywide council grows, it would be “doomed” without some county funding.

Panelist Mary Anne Hedderson, cultural affairs officer for the city of Oakland, said, “The whole point of this is that the public sector does have a role. It’s not enough, especially in an urban center, to say private-sector support is sufficient.”

The supervisors will take up the question of a local arts council during their 1990-91 budget hearings, beginning in July.