Art isn't easy

Money for groups around the state is a small part of Florida's budget battle, but its importance - or lack of it - says something big about our society.

By LENNIE BENNETT, Times Art Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 15, 2003

Is it such a big deal, when education and social services funds are being savaged in the legislative budget battle, that state money for the arts may disappear?

At best, under Gov. Jeb Bush's proposal, arts spending by the state would total about $12-million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. At worst, under the Senate proposal, it would be reduced to nothing. In between is the House budget, which allocates about $6-million. Gone from all the proposed budgets is money earmarked for bricks-and-mortar projects that totaled $18-million for the coming budget year. In this fiscal year, the state committed about $25-million, not counting money alloted as separate items, such as the more than $40-million for the Ringling museum expansion that was part of Florida State University's budget.

Why should we care about these dollars, when children face teacher and textbook shortages, the medically needy can't get treatment and homeless families could remain out on the streets?

For all the same good reasons that we should care about the underserved, the unrepresented and the disenfranchised. Caring about them is not only the right thing to do, it makes good, long-term business sense.

Most people choose a place to settle for more than its favorable tax rates; they want a place with possibilities. Most would find a community without art education, museums and theaters as troubling in its own way as one with parks filled with the homeless. And having services that cater to life enhancements such as the arts enriches us more than intellectually and emotionally.

"Every dollar the state invests generates about 44 local dollars" in money spent on a range of things, including hotel costs, ticket purchases and salaries, says Sherron Long, president of the Florida Cultural Action Alliance, an advocacy organization. "Arts money is not a handout or an entitlement. It should be considered an investment."

We're talking about state spending that amounts to less than one-fourth of 1 percent of the budget. And arts dollars are often matched by private donors, a system that generates money as well as meaningful partnerships.

Basically, our tax dollars support the arts in two ways. The first is through program funding, which could include mundane expenses such as the power bill along with performances and exhibitions. But that money mostly is used for education -- school tours and after-school classes, for example. Those grants, as they're called, are awarded over a three-year period. About 700 organizations throughout the state received money from that pot last year.

The second category of arts money is for bricks-and-mortar projects -- expansions and new facilities. Those grants are given each year and are much larger, and so, far fewer organizations benefit.

Who gets what is decided by a state agency, the Division of Cultural Affairs, and a committee of arts activists statewide, in what most involved in the process agree is an even-handed review to make sure the money is given out as fairly as possible.

Bricks-and-mortar dollars are no longer available because legislators eliminated their source. Fourteen years ago, legislators mandated that a portion of the taxes collected from corporations would be used for these projects. The program was set up so awards were made after fairly rigorous review, rather than through political gamesmanship.

Without that system, smaller arts organizations will suffer the most, especially those that don't enjoy strong political connections. Locally, the Tampa Museum of Art, Ruth Eckerd Hall, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and the Florida Holocaust Museum now will not get about $4-million in construction dollars they had been expecting.

About 80 organizations in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties would lose a total of about $2.5-million from that first pot, the money for programs, if that budget is eliminated.

As bad as it is that some facilities will not receive expected, one-time allocations from the bricks-and-mortar fund -- the Tampa Museum of Art, for example was approved for $2.5-million for its new facility -- the possible loss of program dollars is probably a greater hardship for most institutions. That was money to be distributed over three years, beginning this year, and organizations have based their budgets for next year, and even the year after that, on getting the second and third installments.

What will go away without that money?

"Our outreach and education programs in the school system," says Evelyn Craft, executive director of the Arts Center in St. Petersburg. "We receive about $65,000 in government money for those programs. About 6,500 children would not be served by our free field trips with hands-on activities, more if you count another program, Word and Image, which is available to every public school student in Pinellas County and provides free art supplies and a chance to be part of an exhibit here."

And, as Craft points out, Arts Center programs and others like them were created to fill the gap created as past budget cuts eviscerated arts education funds in school. Because most of these arts enrichment services are free or offered at a low cost, arts organizations need government help to pay for them.

"It will affect our education programs," says John Schloder, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, which is scheduled to receive $80,000 in the coming fiscal year.

"We'll have to cut some programs, school tours."

Summer camps and after-school programs in community centers organized by staff at Ruth Eckerd Hall would be in jeopardy, hall president Robert Freedman says.

"There is such a demand for these services," he says, "and the idea is to be accessible, to go into the community and to keep your costs affordable. That would go away."

The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center is designated to receive almost $200,000 in general revenue money.

"The effect on our education programs will be tremendous," spokeswoman Shannon Connor says. "We'll cut back where we can and try to raise more money in the private sector."

The problem, however, is that corporate donations already are suffering in this tough economy.

"People are deferring things," says Steve Klindt, deputy director of development and public affairs with the Tampa Museum of Art, which could lose as much as $93,000 in general program funds.

Arts groups' strongest advocate is probably Gov. Bush, Sherron Long says. His proposed distribution of $12-million in program grants -- not building projects -- is mostly what the Division of Cultural Affairs requested for arts groups, says its director, JuDee Pettijohn, and is about the same amount spent last year.

But politics is pragmatism and compromise, and probably everyone will meet somewhere between zero and that $12-million.

If that happens, Pettijohn says, her agency will slash everyone's funding proportionately.

"I think everyone's going to have to give up something this year," says Judith Powers, executive director of the Pinellas County Arts Council. "We just ask that it's fair to all sectors, including the arts."

There's a bigger issue here than the current budget brawl. Arts funding in Florida has never been that impressive. Cutting it further is an acknowledgement that creativity, developing it and nourishing it, is an expendable commodity.

In a larger sense -- because this issue is not isolated to Florida -- we have become a country that no longer works much with our hands, sending most of our production to other countries. But we are still a people who create ideas. And ideas are what propel us forward. Lose the arts, a key avenue for creative thinking, and you lose the base that generates so many technical, social and cultural advancements.

That might seem like a big leap from school tours getting cut from the budget. But when we're considering where we're going to start on a course of action, we have to think about where we might end.

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