Virginia House shoots down pleas to 'save' arts

RICHMOND

Even as hundreds of arts supporters wearing "Save the Arts" stickers descended on the Capitol, the House of Delegates passed a version of the state budget on Thursday that would eliminate the state arts commission.

Advocates packed the House gallery and lined the halls and staircases to urge lawmakers to preserve the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Del. Jenn McClellan, D-Richmond, welcomed the visitors, but no discussion of arts funding took place before the 61-38 vote.

If the commission gets killed in the final 2010- 12 budget in mid-March, and arts groups get no state money starting in mid-2011, "it would change who we are," said Luci Cochran, executive director of the Peninsula Fine Arts Center of Newport News, who was among the arts advocates. Her group received $55,130 this year from the commission.

"For the last year or so," Cochran said, "we've looked at 'What can we trim?' over and over again. There is no fat. And with these times, economically, the private sector cannot make up the difference."

The center would probably have to cut a position and cancel exhibitions or programs, altering its mission, she said.

John Dixon, director of the Academy of Music in Norfolk, visited the offices of 67 delegates Thursday, he said. For his group, which provides music classes, scholarships for low-income children are at stake.

Dixon said the loss of state arts funding "could lead to the closing of a number of valuable organizations. It could lead to further burdens on the state's unemployment resources, to reduced revenue flows to Richmond from ticket sales and hotel rooms and income tax."

At the General Assembly, "secretaries told me they had been getting lots of phone calls and e-mails" pleading to save the arts commission, he said.

Though the House budget package is thick with items, the arts commission, which received $4.4 million this year for grants to 700 groups, was among the standout issues in the halls of the General Assembly, Dixon said.

Outside the Capitol, some arts advocates held up signs. Among them was Matt Polson. A teacher at The School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community, Polson said that if the commission is eliminated, "I and about 50 percent of my friends will be out of a job."

As word spread, Hampton Roads arts leaders assessed how they would manage without the state grants.

"It's pretty scary," said Katie Stone, general manager of the Hurrah Players, a Norfolk-based family theater that offers performing-arts classes. The loss of state money would mean fewer, if any, scholarships for its gifted, underprivileged students. Her group got $28,645 from the commission this year, and most of it went to scholarships.

The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk got nearly $100,000 this year. Without that grant, something would have to go, director Bill Hennessey said. "It's exhibitions, it's programs or it's people."

House Appropriations Committee members proposed to cut the commission's budget in half next year and eliminate it entirely by July 1, 2011, because, in this lean year, they did not deem the arts a core service of government, Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, said this week.

Hennessey took a different view.

"Well, what is the core of what the government should do? Is it a government function to encourage tourism or economic development or education?" he said, adding that arts and culture are integral to all three.

"And if the government has some role in supporting jobs, there are a lot of people who work in jobs supported by that $4.4 million," Hennessey said.

"The arts are willing to take a hit like everybody else," he said, a sentiment voiced by many arts managers who want the cut to be proportionate to losses other agencies will endure.

The House and Senate will vote on each other's versions of the budget, then a bipartisan conference committee will hash out a final recommended budget. The full legislature will vote on that budget before the session ends on March 13.

Until that vote, Hennessey said, "we will continue trying to help people understand what a terrible idea this is."

Pilot writer Bill Sizemore contributed to this report.

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