States, arts at odds

Everyone knows the joke about government spending: A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

In that light, the stakes are paltry when it comes to what state governments spend on the arts -- although in these days of dwindling public treasuries the talk is more about what states are planning not to spend on the arts.

New Jersey needs to come up with $5 billion to balance next year’s budget, and the governor’s answer includes disposing -- reluctantly, but entirely -- of his state’s arts funding, a savings of $18 million.

Arizona needs to make up a $500-million shortfall, and its Legislature’s joint budget committee, steered by two conservative leaders philosophically opposed to public subsidies for the arts, has come up with the same answer: erase all arts spending; save $12 million. The governor of Missouri also wants to flatline his state’s $3.9-million arts budget in fiscal 2003-04.

New York Gov. George Pataki has proposed cutting the state’s arts council budget -- the nation’s largest -- from $44 million to $37.4 million. In California, Gov. Gray Davis boosted the arts when times were flush, hiking the budget of the California Arts Council from $20.1 million to a record $30.7 million in 2000-01, just as the stock market boom peaked. Now, in trying to bridge a budgetary chasm -- $34.6 billion by the governor’s estimate and $26.1 billion by that of the state’s legislative analyst -- Davis has proposed the leanest state arts budget in more than a decade. The $11.5-million outlay would be $2 million to $3 million less than what the state spent annually on arts during the last recession in the early 1990s.

This fiscal year, 42 states cut their arts budgets, for an average decline of 13.4%, said Kimber Craine, spokesman for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies; California and Massachusetts, where spending tumbled by more than half in 2002-03, took by far the steepest hits.

The coming year’s state budget proposals are not all in yet; Craine said that although some governors want to hold arts spending steady or make minimal cuts, “we don’t expect 2004 to be any better, given what we’re hearing about the kinds of deficits states are facing.”

Federal aid from the National Endowment for the Arts won’t fill the gap; President Bush has proposed $117 million for the coming year, a tick above this year’s $116.5 million. Local governments, at about $800 million a year, provide the greatest share of public art support.

Arts leaders in California and nationwide said that, by themselves, cuts in state support won’t be fatal to most recipients. But these flesh wounds come at a time when arts groups already are bleeding from other cuts. A sour stock market and an economy suffering from global jitters has shrunk endowment funds, squeezed private foundations and individual donors and made cultural consumers more choosy at the box office.

Experts say it is rare for all arts funding sources to be hurting at once.

“I’m not hearing any theaters saying, ‘If the state grant goes away, we close our doors tomorrow,’ ” said Ben Cameron, director of Theatre Communications Group, an umbrella organization for nonprofit theaters. “But I am hearing, ‘With the cuts, we’re at a critical moment in figuring out how we go forward.’ ”

Nationwide, aggregate state arts funding already has fallen from a peak of $446.8 million two years ago to $354 million this year, according to the research and advocacy group Americans for the Arts.

In California, flagship institutions such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Opera and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are getting $40,000 to $50,000 from the state instead of the $140,000 or so they enjoyed during the fat times two years ago.

For smaller theater and dance companies, museums and musical groups, the state grant is much lower, with $4,000 the most common amount.

In recent years, about half the state money has gone toward arts education, including schools’ artist-in-residence programs. About 15% pays directly for performances and grants to individual artists, and about 30% goes to “organizational and operating support,” money that arts organizations can use, for the most part, as they see fit.

Some arts leaders say it’s time for more aggressive lobbying. When it comes to nourishing a healthy body politic, they argue, the arts are a main course, not a dessert. Fund the arts, and you’ll be paid back in a more enlightened, productive citizenry.

There’s also an economic case for the arts: Folks who buy tickets to a play or a symphony or spend a day at a museum also spend on parking, restaurants, gasoline and other add-ons that feed local economies and make the arts an effective engine for jobs and prosperity.

An oft-cited study by Americans for the Arts estimated that the $53.2 billion nonprofit arts organizations spent in 2000 generated an additional $80.8 billion for other businesses.

Also, advocates say, state grants to the arts -- which usually hinge on favorable peer review by panels of artists and experts -- can be parlayed into further gifts from private donors. That makes them especially important to small and emerging organizations.

“The amount is not a lot, but it sends an important signal that this is a responsible, reputable organization. It helps other funders find out who’s great and who’s not so great,” said Michael Alexander, director of Grand Performances, a nonprofit group that presents free concerts in downtown Los Angeles.

Partisans of state arts funding say they are forging lobbying alliances with business interests, and launching letter-writing campaigns intended to show legislators the potential voting muscle of the arts constituency.

Nationally, the advocacy group Americans for the Arts is spearheading a campaign to place free print and broadcast ads trumpeting arts -- and public funding of the arts -- as indispensable in the lives of children.

“We need to elevate the arts to something people actually vote about,” said Marc A. Scorca, president of the national service group Opera America.

“To get other sectors to advocate for us because they think [the arts] are important for a healthy community -- that’s new,” said Al Maitland, chief executive of the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, a private nonprofit service and lobbying group. His organization believes the state government should reduce arts spending by no more than $2 million, rather than the $7.7-million cut Gov. Davis has proposed.

Arts advocates can expect a vigorous debate. Even a longtime arts funding supporter like New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. James E. McGreevey couldn’t justify continuing state grants in the face of a shortfall that prompted him to recommend taking away state-funded health care for 70,000 adults, an aide said. Proposing a budget with zero arts funding “was an agonizing thing for him to do, but right now it’s something we can’t afford,” said McGreevey’s press secretary, Micah Rasmussen.

In Arizona, the Legislature’s two conservative Republican budget committee leaders, Sen. Bob Burns and Rep. Russell Pearce, say they don’t think it’s right for government to fund the arts, especially now.

“If it’s all that important to all of those folks, then they ought to support it with their own checkbooks,” Burns said. “Why should taxpayers having a hard time in this economy support something they don’t take part in?”

Tyler Cowen, an economist at Virginia’s George Mason University, is skeptical when arts advocates say that government funding brings economic growth. Their studies don’t take into account what the same dollars might generate if put to some other government use, or if they were funneled back to the taxpayers, said Cowen.

“The arts are essential, but not the arts we get from state spending,” he said. “I don’t want to trivialize it -- you would have less of some kinds of art if state subsidies were cut. But I don’t think we should exaggerate it, either. The sums involved are so small, I don’t see the damage.”

In the debates ahead, those who want to shield state arts funding may be challenged because of the very resiliency and resourcefulness that artists and arts organizations historically have shown.

“The cuts are getting everybody shaken up, but the arts have been scrambling and surviving for a long time. They will find a way to survive and find other ways to make the system work and be supportive,” acknowledges Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts. But that, he adds, doesn’t mean there won’t be real pain and loss. “As a matter of survival, there will be fewer performances, shorter hours and perhaps not quite as elaborate or artistically full productions as there could be. The loser is the audience.”