Arts Council Budget in Jeopardy

Among the cuts proposed in Gov. Gray Davis’ revised May budget is a reduction of more than $16 million for the California Arts Council, slashing the council’s $31-million budget for support of arts organizations, programs and arts education to $14.5 million for fiscal year 2002-2003.

If the cut is made final, funding for the agency, which has enjoyed increases throughout Davis’ administration, would drop almost to the $14-million level where it hovered from 1992 to 1998 under Gov. Pete Wilson.

Supporters of the state arts agency have until July 1--the start of the next fiscal year--to plead their case for reducing the cut, which could result in layoffs of about half of the council’s 42-member staff as well as the elimination of numerous programs, including performing arts touring and presenting, artists in residence and artists’ fellowships.

“The severity of these cuts was unexpected. This is the ultimate rock and a hard place,” said arts council director Barry Hessenius.

In the wake of Sept. 11 and its toll on the California economy, Gov. Davis requested that all state agencies cut 15% from their proposed budgets for 2002-2003, but the council was encouraged that that figure for their agency was reduced to 7.7%, or about $2 million. In his current budget, announced Tuesday, the governor proposed to close the largest deficit in state history--nearly $24 billion--with a combination of program cuts and tax increases.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Steven Fogel, past arts council chairman and a current member of the council, called the proposed reduction “devastating.”

“The not-for-profit arts are so needy, in a sense there is so much demanded and so little that we are able to do for them, that to take away so much of what we have is a tragedy,” he said.

What’s left in the governor’s arts council budget includes $6 million for arts education (down from $10 million), $5 million for organizational support programs (down from more than $10 million) and $2 million for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.