Painful Arts Cuts Really a Budgetary Victory

We appreciate Allan Parachini’s intelligent and, for the most part, accurate coverage of the California Arts Council (CAC) budget this year. However, his last article about the CAC, “Arts Council Hit by 6.6% Budget Cut” (Calendar, July 25), had a number of factual inaccuracies and also failed to place CAC reductions in the context of the rest of the state budget agreement. The article, unfortunately, had the effect of sensationalizing the modest CAC budget decrease and understating the real victory the arts community achieved by keeping the CAC budget essentially intact during the worst fiscal crisis in the state’s history.

Despite opposition from some legislators and from a legislative analyst who recommended the total elimination of the state arts agency, the CAC’s budget diminished by only 6.6%--a $1.13-million drop from last year’s $16.97 million. While this cut will be painful, it is no more painful than those sustained by other state agencies.

Parachini’s article states that reductions were twice as severe as the CAC had expected; in fact, the agency was aware of the main bulk of the cuts in January. At the time, Gov. Pete Wilson slashed 4% across the board in all state agencies’ 1991-92 budgets under a deficit-reduction formula adopted by the legislature last year. Parachini reported in April about the CAC’s loss of 4% of its previous funding. The CAC sustained an additional 15% administrative cut of $439,000 from the Department of Finance--a 2.6% cut in the agency’s overall 1990-91 budget, bringing the CAC’s total budget reduction for this year to 6.6%.

Although any decrease in the CAC budget hurts the already under-funded agency and should not be trivialized, the arts community should congratulate itself and its supporters in Sacramento for protecting the CAC budget from the level of spending cuts that have devastated other arts agencies. New York’s arts budget sustained a nearly 50% cut, from $51.3 million to $25.8 million; Virginia’s state arts agency was cut by 63%, from $4 million to $1.5 million, and in Michigan the governor has proposed a 98% reduction.

The relatively modest cut to the CAC was primarily due to the efforts of a statewide grass-roots campaign that included thousands of arts supporters, artists and representatives from a wide range of California’s art institutions. In addition, hundreds of artists and art supporters came to the capital during the California Confederation of the Arts “Arts Day” in March to explain to their legislators the importance of maintaining the CAC budget at the 1990-91 level. And we had a sympathetic governor and supportive legislative leadership.

Put simply, the arts budget did better than anyone expected in a terrible budget year. But what now? Our goal is to raise state support of the arts to $1 per capita, or more than $30 million. California ranks low in the nation in per-capita state arts funding, while boasting the nation’s greatest number of working artists and largest arts economy. State-supported art activities create thousands of jobs, help intervene with troubled children and foster cultural understanding of California’s diverse ethnic communities.

With state leadership, the arts can do more in reaching our neighborhoods, cities and children. But we are not closer to this goal if we fail to recognize the significant victory of this year’s arts council budget.