QUICK TAKES - May 30, 2009
It’s “wait till next year” -- again -- for a bill in the state legislature that would have provided a boost of about $30 million a year for the California Arts Council and raised the state’s per-capita arts funding from last in the nation to the middle of the pack.
The bill, titled the “Creative Industries and Community Economic Revitalization Act,” was put on hold until 2010 on Thursday in the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee. Two earlier bills to increase arts funding had died in committees since 2005. This one calls for one-fifth of the state sales taxes collected from arts-related businesses such as art galleries, record shops and musical instrument stores to be reserved for the state arts council’s grants to nonprofit arts organizations.
With California facing deficits of more than $20 billion and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposing cuts to healthcare, social services and education, backers of the arts funding bill took a page out of Shakespeare and decided that discretion would be the better part of valor.
The California Taxpayers’ Assn. opposes the bill and will continue to do so, spokesman David Kline said -- not because of antipathy for arts funding, but because it doesn’t want more revenue tagged for a restricted, predetermined use. As the state tries to unravel its fiscal problems, he said, “it’s especially important not to tie your hands for the future.”
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Mike Boehm
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