At a time when the arts seem to be sprouting up all over Effingham County, many state lawmakers were ready to eliminate the state’s own Council for the Arts — and the grants funding that it disperses to arts organizations all over the state.
But the state Senate has voted to keep the agency after the Senate Appropriations Committee restored $860,000 in funding for the Georgia Council for the Arts in its version of the fiscal year 2011 budget.
“When members see that there is genuine public interest in something, then I think they do respond,” said state Sen. Jack Hill (R-Reidsville), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “And we had members who had not warmed up to that idea earlier who were impressed by the response from around the state,”
He said the Council for the Arts is still getting a $2 million cut over last year. Hill said he’d love to increase funding for the arts, but in this budget climate, every expenditure competes with things such as health care for seniors and public schools.
The Senate version of the budget now has to be reconciled with the House version before final passage.
“The entire arts industry of Georgia — from for-profit filmmakers and galleries to nonprofit museums and performance groups, to arts education providers, and to our entrepreneurial artists — is deeply grateful,” said GCA Executive Director Susan Weiner.
Tony Phillips, Georgia Council on the Arts manager for the region that includes Effingham, said closing the GCA would have been disastrous for hundreds of arts organizations around the state. In Effingham County, organizations such as the Effingham Community Orchestra, who received a Grassroots grant from the GCA this year, and the Effingham County Council for the Arts would have to look elsewhere for program funding if the council had closed.
“Given the governor’s proposal, we have had to quickly enact changes that ensure that the agency can weather these times without reducing contracts in FY2010 or the projected amount of money available for grants in FY2011,” Phillips said. “I am very disappointed that the Appropriations Committee and the Georgia House of Representatives has voted they be shut down.”
The Council has already been making cuts, eliminating the Traditional Arts program and also the administrative director’s position. While many regard arts funding as a superfluous expenditure, Tim Chapman, executive director of the Averitt Center for the Arts in Statesboro, commented on just how much revenue the arts are responsible for in Statesboro alone. Chapman said that the number of businesses that have opened in Statesboro’s downtown because of the opening of the Averitt Center for the Arts has been significant and as a result, new business and the resulting sales tax revenue has added a great deal to Statesboro’s economy.
Springfield Mayor Jeff Northway has been hopeful the reopening of the Mars Theatre would do much the same thing for Springfield’s downtown.
Weiner, said she thought the House committee had been given bad information about the role the council plays in arts funding.
“The Georgia House proposed that the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and then the Georgia Arts Alliance could replace GCA and thus, receive our federal grants,” she said. “According to the National Endowment for the Arts, neither organization is eligible to receive the federal dollars that GCA receives, over $870,000. Additionally, and for the same reasons above, Georgia artists and arts organizations would not be eligible for South Arts grants; another $100,000 just last year.”
Weiner said GCA’s mandate is “access to the arts for all Georgians,” which is accomplished annually through the GCA’s Grassroots Arts Program (GAP) and direct GCA grants. Neither the Georgia Arts Alliance nor the partial 1 percent sales tax legislation (HB1049) is designed to meet this same mission, which is an NEA requirement for the annual grant GCA receives.”
There is one more action that must be taken — the final approval by the Conference Committee that resolves differences between the House and Senate budget recommendations.
Georgia Council for the Arts has received an enormous volume of e-mails and calls from Georgia citizens and agency grantees who have expressed a strong desire to assist in any efforts that will keep the agency alive. The vocal support that poured into the Senate’s offices may have been what kept the GCA alive.
Funding for Georgia Council for the Arts is provided by appropriations from the General Assembly, the National Endowment for the Arts and other private and public sources.
Georgia Council for the Arts is the state agency that provides support for nonprofit arts organizations in Georgia. Established in 1965 as the Georgia Commission on the Arts, its mission is to encourage excellence in the arts, support the arts may forms of expression and create access to the arts for all Georgians by providing funding, leadership, programming and other services.
