Arts Council Hit by 6.6% Budget Cut : * Funding: State organization may lay off as many as eight of 52 workers and will reduce size and number of grants after $1.13-million cutback.

The California Arts Council may lay off as many as eight of its 52 employees and will cut the size and number of grants it gives to artists and arts organizations statewide because of a budget cut more than twice as severe as the agency had expected.

The belt-tightening was disclosed Wednesday as the arts council struggled to cope with a 6.6%, $1.13-million budget reduction. The final cut was the product of negotiations between Gov. Pete Wilson and lawmakers that ended July 16 when Wilson signed into law the state’s $55.7-billion fiscal 1992 spending plan.

The arts council, which received $16.97 million in the 1991 fiscal year, will get $15.84 million for 1992. A total of $525,000 has been cut from the arts council’s grants budget and $605,000 from its administrative fund.

The cut places California in about the middle of proportionate rankings of arts-related budget reductions enacted by legislatures across the country for the new fiscal cycle. According to preliminary estimates by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, spending for state arts councils is dropping nearly 27% nationally in fiscal 1992.

Six state arts councils have been hit with cuts of more than 50%. Overall arts spending by state legislatures, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, has dropped from $274 million in fiscal 1991 to $201 million this year.

California’s situation emerged as the end product of a financial roller coaster ride for the arts council in the final days of the budget debate in the Legislature. Wilson proposed a reduction of just $400,000 for the arts council, but as the overall budget situation deteriorated, Assembly Republicans proposed far more drastic action--including outright elimination of the arts council.

But Wednesday, arts council officials said that technical negotiations over the precise amount of cuts to a broad range of state agencies had swept the arts council up in a broader statewide retrenchment in government administrative costs. While the arts council did not sustain proportionately greater reductions than other state agencies, officials said, the small size of the arts agency budget and staff may make it more difficult to avoid noticeable reductions in programming for artists and arts groups.

Susan Hoffman, executive director of the California Confederation of the Arts, said she was distressed, but not shocked, by what turned out to be the magnitude of the cut in statewide arts funding. “We had the feeling (as budget negotiations continued) that not all of the factors were in and there was the feeling, to use the cliche, of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I think the real story about the arts council this year is the fact it we survived. Every day, it was defending our very existence, and I think in the end, we’re probably stronger for it (from a) political point of view.”

The arts council’s political situation has been impaired by Wilson’s failure to name a new executive director after the resignation earlier this year of Robert Reid. On Wednesday, a Wilson spokesman said the governor has begun to turn his attention to filling dozens of top vacancies in his administration.

The 11-member council meets in San Diego on Friday, but officials said no final package of program reductions will be ready for consideration by then. Joe Alameida, the council’s administrative officer, said Wednesday that cuts in the size of awards to arts organizations and overall reductions in the number of fellowships to individual artists and positions allocated for visiting artist grants were likely to be among actions taken to cope with the shortfall.

“We’re trying to make this as invisible as possible,” Alameida said. He said that, while four currently vacant positions will not be filled and between four and eight employees will be laid off, the agency was attempting to avoid delays in processing applications and sending grant payments to artists and arts groups.

He said the council is sensitive to the fact that many small arts organizations in the state are in the worst financial situations they have ever encountered because of nationwide declines in private arts funding and in the spending power of the National Endowment for the Arts. “We are trying to continue programs the way they are set up,” he said.

State arts leaders tried to emphasize what they characterized as the comparative good fortune of the California Arts Council versus similar agencies in other states. In Washington, the National Assembly noted that the New York State Council on the Arts, historically a bellwether of the fortunes of public arts funding at the state level, sustained a 49.72% cut in its budget this year. California’s reduction, by contrast is just 6.6%.

Even with the cut, however, New York’s arts budget continued to show that that state emphasizes statewide public financing of the arts to a greater extent than California, which has a greater population. With the cut, New York’s arts council budget is $25.8 million.

Joanne Kozberg, the arts council’s vice chair, said, “I think we should be very pleased with the value that was ultimately seen for the role of the arts in California. That held initially with the governor, through the Legislature and then back to the governor.

“We will have to be very careful with our resources. We are going to have to do more with less, but the demand is increasing and the arts are exploding throughout the state.”