Hard Times Hobble Art Agencies Across Country : Funding: NEA reports cautious optimism about its own future.

State arts agencies across the country have lost $83 million, or 29% of their funding, over the past three years because of budget problems at all levels of government, according to a report prepared by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Edward Dickey, acting deputy chairman of NEA and director of states programs, gave the report as members of the endowment’s national council gathered here for two days amid an air of cautious optimism about the future of their controversial organization.

Some veteran members, including Catherine Yi-yu Cho Woo, poet and essayist who directs the China Studies Institute at San Diego University, said they hoped President Clinton soon would appoint a new chairman of national renown to lead the agency, often under attack by Bush Administration officials and the religious right for allegedly supporting obscene or pointless works of art.

Dickey painted a grim picture he said could be improved by the kind of direction that a robust national organization provides. His report said that “distressing cuts brought on by state fiscal problems” have led a number of large states including California, Florida and New York to cut appropriations for the arts by more than 20%.

Dickey insisted that the cuts in state funding had nothing to do with controversy over artistic programs or works of art or with increases in NEA grants to any states.

“The fact of the matter,” he said, “is that nearly every state has faced a budget crisis of some magnitude and this was the year that the bottom fell out. It was as if all our governments hit the wall at the same time, and none of them hit the wall harder than the states.”

Because many states, like California, are required by law to have a balanced budget and cannot accumulate debt, spending cuts have been felt across the board and “discretionary programs” like support for the arts “have been under severe pressure,” Dickey reported.

The council’s Friday and Saturday meeting was the first since Clinton’s Inauguration, and found the group without a chairman. John Frohnmayer, the last permanent head of the council, was fired last spring by former President Bush. He was replaced by an acting chairwoman, Anne-Imelda Radice, who recently resigned.

Unlike the transition teams that preceded President Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration in 1981 and Bush’s in 1989, the Clinton group has seemed friendly to the agency and its work, some members said.

“I guess it’s too early to tell until Clinton appoints a new chairman, but I’m hopeful,” Cho Woo said. “We hope he appoints somebody with the experience and wisdom to guide this body.”

Louise McClure of McCall, Ida., another council member and board member of the Boise Philharmonic, said the NEA “may be in for smoother times. I sense an optimistic outlook because something has moved in the country.”

Dickey, in his report, said many state arts agencies “are noticeably thinner than they were just three years ago.” Some have reorganized or reduced their staffs. Ohio, for example, laid off most of its clerical staff “to save the program staff that directly serve the field,” he said.

He added that some states “are developing partnerships with private organizations and agencies of state and local government.” He said Arizona, for example, has developed such a partnership among artists, educators, prosecutors and businessmen “to develop and implement arts programs that help youth reject drugs.” The program is partly financed with funds derived from successful RICO anti-racketeering lawsuits.

Bennett Tarleton, executive director of the Tennessee Arts Commission, gave the council a firsthand account of how his agency has survived the funding crisis.

“One of the ways state arts agencies are dealing with these tough economic times is by identifying special sources of state revenue that can be dedicated to the arts,” Tarleton said.

“This year, for example, we are in better shape because we received additional dedicated income from the sale of personalized car tags.”

He noted that the California Arts Council also has gotten into the vanity license tag business. “And cultural institutions in Florida and Arizona now receive through their state arts agencies dedicated income from their states’ annual incorporation fees,” Tarleton said.

“When the going gets tough, state arts agencies go shopping for partnerships that stretch resources, tap other folks’ deeper pockets and make the arts agency a resource for meeting a variety of public priorities.”