More state arts agencies face cuts

Embattled arts officials in Missouri, who face a proposed 100% cut in state arts spending, thought they had a unique crisis on their hands. But a broader scan of belt-tightening measures nationwide shows that state officials in New Jersey and Arizona, too, are proposing budgets that earmark nothing for the state arts agencies.

On Monday, New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey proposed cutting the state Council on the Arts’ entire $18-million budget for the coming year.

He also called for dropping $3.7 million in funding for the historical commission and canceling a $10-million payment to the state’s cultural trust that distributes money to struggling cultural groups. Together, state officials said, those cuts would eliminate 43 jobs.

In Arizona, where the state Commission on the Arts has received $5.1 million in each of the last two years, a joint legislative committee on Jan. 27 proposed zeroing out that spending in 2003-04. The committee also proposed emptying the state’s $7-million arts endowment and spending the money elsewhere.

Missouri Gov. Bob Holden had drawn broad attention with his late-January proposal to delete state arts council funds -- about $3.9 million yearly -- from the 2003-04 budget.

In California, Gov. Gray Davis has proposed a roughly 50% cut in appropriations for the California Arts Council, which council officials say would reduce its grants to artists and arts groups from $16.4 million in 2002-03 to about $8 million in the next year.

The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., reports that funding to state arts agencies has been on the decline for two years, including a 13% drop from $408.6 million in fiscal 2002 to $353.9 million in the current fiscal year.

Spokesman Kimber Craine said that until legislatures vote on next year’s budgets, the arts figures will remain moving targets. Some proposals could turn out to be “political gamesmanship” as governors look for ways to publicly dramatize their budget crises.