The arts
community in New Jersey was under no illusions that the 2004 fiscal
year would be a pleasant one. Currently laboring under a staggering
$5 billion budget deficit, New Jersey, like nearly every state in the
union, faces drastic belt-tightening in the upcoming funding cycle.
But no one was expecting what they
got when Gov. James McGreevey, a Democrat, unveiled his proposed
budget last month: no funds at all for the state’s Arts
Council.
“It was very shocking,” says Ann
Marie Miller, executive director of the group ArtPRIDE. “The governor
has been very vocal in his support of the arts throughout the state.”
McGreevey, during his 2001 campaign, “had told us that he wanted to
give us a blueprint for increasing funding,” Miller explains.
To the contrary, if McGreevey gets
his way when the budget goes into effect on July 1, the council’s
entire $18 million budget will be eliminated, along with those of
both the state’s Cultural Trust and its Historical Commission.
This puts New Jersey in the
company of Missouri, where Democratic Gov. Bob Holden has likewise
proposed that the state make do without funding for the Missouri Arts
Council (MAC). In Arizona, the legislature is currently toying with a
similar complete defunding of the arts.
In fact, arts budgets are on the
ropes all over the country. Washington Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat
facing a $2 billion deficit, has proposed cutting $2.2 million from
the Washington State Arts Commission, or 39 percent of its budget.
Gov. Gray Davis’s proposal in California would more than halve the
arts budget there.
To be sure, it is an
extraordinarily difficult time for state budgets. In the mid- to late
’90s, the states enjoyed healthy revenue streams and almost
universally cut taxes and increased spending, including on programs
mandated by the federal government (like Medicaid and standardized
testing). Now, as the economy enters a second year of doldrums, the
states—49 of which are constitutionally required to keep a balanced
budget, unlike the federal government—are paying the price for their
earlier optimism.
Even Kimber Craine, communications
manager at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, has some
sympathy for governors and legislatures forced to make hard choices
about arts funding. “It’s a particularly awful time,” Craine says.
“These budget deficits are huge, and states just have no idea where
they’re going to find the money.”
Crane points to California, which
has a deficit currently hovering around $35 billion. “Even if they
shut down the entire state government, just laid everybody off, they
couldn’t close that budget gap. … The states are in their worst
financial condition since World War II.”
Nor does the horizon look
particularly rosy, thanks to the federal budget policy being pursued
by the Bush administration. With the president calling not only for
elimination of the dividend tax, but an acceleration of the 2001 tax
cuts, states are not likely to see more revenue any time soon. Throw
in the fact that the federal government has long made a habit of
mandating state programs (think last year’s No Child Left Behind Act)
without adequately funding them, and the states are in big
trouble.
On February 24, the president told
a delegation from the National Governors Association that help is
definitely not on the way. “We’ve got an issue with our own budget,
and you’ve got issues with your budgets,” the president
said.
In the meantime, all that the
state arts councils are asking is that governors and legislators not
make them suffer disproportionately, especially considering their
budgets typically represent such a tiny portion of state expenditures
in the first place. Most of all, arts advocates are hopeful that
states keep in mind the tremendous economic impact the arts have on
their communities. Says Arts Council Executive Director Norree Boyd:
“A symphony is not just a symphony playing a symphony in a symphony
hall.”
Ben Winters is a journalist, arts
critic, and playwright living in Brooklyn.