mcgwillie

We have a very nice, but small, company in our town. The woman who runs it, Robin Welch, is a dynamo. But I know what the operating budget is, so I would like to set it up so that they don't have to worry about raising the money to make ends meet and could do some of the things artistically they would like to do. My 12 year old DD dances at the company school. If she quit tomorrow, she has benefitted so much from dance--well it would be the least I could do to put the local company and school in a good place financially. Mcgwillie

I don't want to be too cynical or too pessimistic. And I don't want to denigrate Mr. Gioia--he sounds like a terrific person and that was a wonderful poem. But I don't think he will be able to do anything for the arts or arts funding that the administration doesn't perceive to be politically advantagous to do. The examples that come to mind are Christie Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, and a man named John Diulio. Whitman was appointed to be the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. largely because she was perceived to have some credibility on environmental issues--a fairly rare thing among Republican officeholders. She didn't stay there long, resigning after a series of instances where the administration backed away from positions taken in the campaign that were environmentally friendly. (At one time candidate Bush said on the record that he wanted a whole series of pollutants brought within certain standards; at the prodding of the energy industry, President Bush backed away from that with regard to a number of the pollutants.) The point being that it was politically expedient for the administration to appoint someone with environmental bona fides but when push came to shove, she had no impact on policy. Diulio had a gig at the White House to work with some of the faith-based initiative stuff the President has been advocating. He quickly left when it became clear to him that the "Mayberry Machiavellis" were running things, that political expediency always ruled the day, and that there was no real concern with the development of coherent public policy. I would love to be pleasantly surprised on this issue. But I am not holding my breath. Mcgwillie

There was an earlier thread on funding for the arts at the state level and I guess this is sort of an extension of that. I am a ballet dad who has gotten hooked and now we go to see the local company, even if we have no daughters dancing in the production. And the arts add to the enjoyment and civility of life, so you are preaching to the choir about arts funding. But I think the dilemma goes deeper than merely pressuring narrow minded politicians. The states face some real budget problems. Many states have had to cut the extent of social services they provide. In out state, where I work for a government agency that deals with aspects of taxation and where we also monitor local government spending, we have made cuts in social services, at the university level and in funding for K-12 education. Our agency, and some others, have laid people off. My point is, in these kinds of times, the politicians we elect, who reflect our views, or at least the segments of the population that voted for them, see the arts as a frill or an extra, in comparison to these other items. Or look at it this way, if you were a state senator or governor, and you had to make hard budget choices, would you want to be perceived as funding the arts over funding social services to help kids or elderly people? No, I think the problem lies with the public. What is it willing to pay for with tax dollars? Our agency gets phone calls and letters from the public, invariably complaining about the level at which they are taxed. I understand that. But these same folks expect good roads, good schools, law enforcement or fire protection when they call 911, and help in caring for their aged parents. There is this huge disconnect for many people between the idea of adequate public services and the taxes they pay. There also seems to be an unwillingness to pay for things that may have a benefit to society as a whole but don't benefit individual taxpayers personally. I don't know how that gets reversed. But a start would be for us, as citizens, to give more thought to what we think government should do or not do, in terms of services and spending and what level of taxation is reasonable to support those functions. mcgwillie

Its not just arts funding that is being cut; its basic services in a lot of places. The states, as a group, are in their worst budget shape since the Great Depression. There are a lot of reasons for this--the poor economy tends to depress revenues generated by sales and income taxes, state legislatures and governors couldn't resist providing big tax cuts which reduced surpluses (and money available to use when the economy is leaner and revenues are down) in the boom years of the mid and late 90s, shifts in spending at the Federal level, resulting in less Federal help for state governments, additional mandates putting additional demands on state treasuries--all of these things create real hard choices for state governments, most of whom are not permitted by their constitutions to run deficits. So, legislators and governors tend to look at the arts as a lower priority than say, prisons, or education, or social services. There's another element to this too. One of the other posters said that the arts just don't rate with legislators. That is true, but lets not let the general public off the hook. There seems to be a real disconnect in people's minds between the taxes they are willing to pay and the services they want. People say they want good schools, or good roads, but then they get outraged that they might have to pay higher taxes for those things. There also is a mindset out there where people don't want to pay taxes for services that they do not receive an immediate benefit from. (Example, the people that get upset about paying taxes to support public schools when they don't have kids in the school system.) I know I don't live in California, but they just recalled a governor largely because their state budget was a mess. But the first thing the new governor did, and some people voted for him because he said he was going to do this, was repeal an automobile tax that would add significantly to the budget shortfall. I don't know what the right level of services, including help to the arts, that government should provide or the right level of taxation to support those things. But these are things that should be discussed and people should be interested in. Unfortunately, more people seem to care about Ben and Jen than care about these kind of policy choices. Sorry to go on about such policy wonk stuff. I work in a position where I have a pretty good view of this kind of stuff and so its easy to get off on a rant. Mcgwillie