Backers organize after vote to kill Virginia arts commission

RICHMOND

Virginia would become the only state without an arts commission if legislators approve a House of Delegates proposal to do away with the grant-making body in mid-2011.

"That's a big piece of our budget," said Keith Stava, managing director of the Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk. This year the group, which has a $2.6 million budget, received nearly $100,000 from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. "It'll be incredibly difficult to replace it."

"Everyone is very worried," said Pat Rublein, executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Hampton Roads. She received numerous e-mails and phone calls Tuesday from arts supporters seeking advice on how to influence legislators to save the commission.

Virginians for the Arts contacted arts groups on Monday about Sunday's vote by a House committee. The statewide lobbying group sent out another e-mail Tuesday prodding culture fans to swarm the General Assembly on Thursday, when the budget measures are expected to come up for a full vote in both houses.

The commission this year is handing out about $3.9 million in state grant money plus $1 million in federal money to 700 recipients. If the commission disbands, the federal money will be lost, said Executive Director Peggy Baggett. Hampton Roads groups receive about 20 percent of the commission's funds each year.

The state spent a total of $4.4 million on the commission this year, including administrative expenses.

While the individual grants are relatively modest in relation to many arts groups' budgets, the grants help leverage cash from other sources, Baggett said.

The largest individual grant this year is $95,625, for each of the state's 19 major arts organizations, Baggett said. Local groups that received that sum were the stage company, Virginia Opera, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Arts Festival and the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Arts managers said the loss comes at a time when budgets already have been slashed because of the economy.

"We have been preparing ourselves for the loss of government funding," said Gus Stuhlreyer, general director of the opera, "but this is going a lot further than we had envisioned."

Rublein argued that funding the arts is good business. In January 2009, Hampton Roads had 2,851 arts-related businesses that employed 15,288 people, according to figures gleaned from data compiled by Americans for the Arts, a lobbying group.

Alan Albert, legislative counsel and a paid lobbyist for Virginians for the Arts, said the House's budget package includes increases for certain tourism initiatives as it cuts the arts commission. "But one of the principal reasons tourists come from out of town and out of state is for arts attractions," Albert said.

Last spring, the Virginia Arts Festival drew 20,000 patrons from outside the area, including 41 states, said Scott Jackson, general manager. That was 25 percent of its total attendance.

From audience surveys, Jackson said, the arts fest has determined that those visitors "contribute about $10 million each year to the Hampton Roads economy."

"Those people are staying in our hotels, eating in our restaurants, paying to park, paying admission taxes. Also, people who travel for cultural events historically spend more and stay longer," Jackson said.

The Senate Finance Committee voted Sunday to go with then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's proposal in his final budget to maintain the commission's current funding.

The commission's budget was already cut by 30 percent in the past two years, Baggett said.

The House Appropriations Committee voted to slice funding in half for 2010- 11, then kill the organization as of July 1, 2011.

Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, a member of the committee, said the decision was painful. "We spent many hours deliberating the cuts we made," he said, but in the end the panel decided that core services such as education, health and public safety had to come first.

The arts commission, "while it's been in the budget for some time," Jones said, "was not, in the minds of the committee, a core function of government."

That will be a recurring theme as the legislature completes work on the budget in the coming weeks, Jones said: "You can't cut $4.3 billion out of a budget and not have almost every function of government affected."

Virginia ranks 34th among states in per-capita spending on the arts, allocating 51 cents per person, Baggett said.

Maryland ranks four th and spends $2.36 per person. North Carolina, at 20th place, spends 89 cents per person.

Baggett, who has held her job for 30 years, said this was the first time one of the financial committees had recommended closing down the commission. In the early 1990s, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder proposed its elimination, but his recommendation was voted down by the legislators, Baggett said.

"This is really as bad as we've ever seen it," she said.

Pilot writer Bill Sizemore contributed to this report.

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