It could be a solo act for the arts in Va. when making a play for funding

As lawmakers hustle to complete the state budget, a key funding source for arts groups still appears quite likely to get zero dollars, or a pittance.

However, the state's other significant source of arts funding, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, is holding steady at $6.6 million for each of the next two years.

Regarding the endangered funding, called nonstate agency grants, Del. Robert Tata, R-Virginia Beach, said: "The likelihood is there will be a little bit of money, but I think it will be a handful of dollars."

"It may be for a leaky roof or for a program on its last legs, and if they don't get funded they'll have to close up," Tata, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said Friday. "More like emergency dollars."

In the previous two-year state budget, $13 million in nonstate agency grants went to Hampton Roads arts groups. For 2009-10, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed $4.1 million for 25 museums and arts organizations, four of which are local, and $1.7 million for 11 other types of organizations; he put in zero for 2008-09. The House and the Senate versions of the budget include no such funding for either year.

"One of the frustrating things is that whenever there's a challenge in the government budgets, they tend to overreact to education and the arts," said Rob Cross, director of the Virginia Arts Festival, which received a total of $725,000 the past two years. Cross had hoped to get another $250,000 listed in Kaine's budget.

The grant money went toward the festival's $10 million campaign for a new building and an endowment campaign of about $6 million. "They just make these drastic cuts, and it's hard to plan an organization that way," Cross said.

One reason the festival is building an endowment is to have a steady stream of income, Cross said.

The state has a more reliable source of arts funding. Since it was founded in 1968, the state arts commission has been the main way arts groups receive grants on a consistent basis.

Arts commission funds have fluctuated, too, depending on the state's fiscal condition, but have never vanished.

Budget plans submitted by the House and the Senate preserved arts commission funding at its current level of $6.6 million for the next two years, said Peggy Baggett, executive director of the arts commission. On Friday, she said the commission was expecting to hear this week about further cuts to the current budget that might affect grants that already have been awarded.

Money probably would not be taken back, she said, because 15 percent of the allocations are not handed to the groups until a final report is filed. If a cut is made, the bite probably would come out of those last payments.

This year, more than 20 percent of the commission's funds went to Hampton Roads: 182 grants were awarded to 136 local groups, for a total of $1.4 million. There's a world of difference between the nonstate agency and the arts commission grants.

Most commission funds go for daily operations, which is the hardest money to raise. Nonstate agency cash usually is tagged for buildings and other special projects, and widely varying sums are awarded to different groups each year.

The Virginia Stage Company and The Hurrah Players are two Norfolk groups that received money the past two years through nonstate agency grants and hoped for more.

An example of projects funded through that source is the Virginia Symphony Orchestra's residencies in remote areas of the state, offering concerts and classes in places with no professional orchestra. Without that money, the residencies will be suspended, said Carla Johnson, president and executive director of the symphony.

Commission grants are judged by panels of experts who assess the quality of the proposals. Nonstate agency grants are recommended by the governor or sponsored by legislators.

History and science museums and other sorts of nonprofit groups and charities are not funded through the arts commission but can get nonstate agency funds.

Another critical difference: Individual groups have received several million dollars through the nonstate agency route. By comparison, the top commission grant this year is $115,000 for the state's major arts organizations, of which Hampton Roads has six.

John Dixon, who heads Norfolk's Academy of Music, said he finds fault with this two-pronged approach.

"Having these two very different ways to receive state funding has pushed organizations in two directions. One is to work for the common good of all arts organizations by promoting adequate funding for the arts through the arts commission, and the other is to look out for your own organization by trying to get significant" nonstate agency funding, Dixon said.

"I prefer the former," he said.

He has been among the arts supporters who lobby the General Assembly each January for more money for the commission. Currently, the national average for state arts commissions is $1.21 a person, and Virginia spends 80 cents.

Nonstate agency funding goes back at least three decades, said Baggett, who began working for the arts commission in 1977.

The Chrysler Museum of Art received substantial grants throughout the 1990s, as much as $1 million a year, largely because of the patronage of the late Sen. Stanley C. Walker, a Norfolk Democrat who co-chaired the Senate Finance Committee.

In 1991, the special funding evaporated during an economic downturn. Then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder also slashed state arts commission funds by 81 percent.

But the nonstate agency grants soon returned and peaked in the late 1990s. When Mark Warner ran for governor in 2001, he said he wanted to find a fair system of distributing the nonstate agency money.

"The proposals never went anywhere," Baggett said, "because the issue of what is fair and equitable was never resolved."

Voting on grants to nonstate agencies is the final action lawmakers take before adjourning, Tata said. "We can't justify funding the arts and having mentally retarded people without a place to go. We just have to make sure our priorities are right," he said.

"It's just a bad year. And hopefully, we'll be able to do it next year."

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com