The Kansas Arts Commission still dangles over oblivion’s pit, with only the most slender chance of survival.
Gov. Sam Brownback asked the Legislature to accept his desire to eliminate the commission and back the creation of a non-profit substitute that would be funded with private donations in its stead. The House went along; the Senate voted against the governor’s executive order, 24-13, and put $689,000 for the commission in its version of the state budget.
Gov. Brownback will have the last word. He can accept the Senate vote — and be responsive to the thousands who have voiced support for the commission from every part of the state — or he can line-item veto the Arts Commission appropriation and kill the agency dead.
Sen. Jeff King, who represents Allen and other southeast Kansas counties, said in Iola last week that he was one of those who voted to keep funding the arts. He also noted that losing the federal matching funding that the state arts budget makes possible would be particularly painful for Iola’s Bowlus Fine Arts Center and the Independence Inge Festival.
In an analysis of the situation, AP writer John Hanna quoted arts commission supporters as saying that the state would lose $1.2 million in federal arts grants if the agency is destroyed. Hanna also pointed out that the $689,000 budgeted for the commission amounts to .01 percent of the $6.1 billion to be spent from the state’s general fund. It is not, in other words, a credible way to cut state spending.
It is — or should be — significant that Steve Morris, president of the Senate, went out of his way to ask the governor to change his mind and support the Senate’s decision.
“We have strong support — statewide — for the Arts Commission. I would hope that the governor would maybe take another look at it and not veto that funding,” he said to Hanna.
In view of the governor’s often repeated pledge to do everything he can to create more jobs in Kansas, arts advocates argue that nonprofit arts and culture organizations — the types of groups supported by the Kansas commission — account for 4,600 jobs in the state and spark $154 million in annual spending by themselves or by the audiences they create in communities.
The additional dollars spent in Iola every year by those who come to the Bowlus Fine Arts Center to take advantage of the cultural events presented make cash registers ring in our restaurants, gas stations, drive-ins, motels and stores.
For the fiscal year ending last June, the commission reported making 298 grants totaling almost $1.7 million to groups in 59 Kansas counties. When arts patrons attend events studies show they spend $20 in the community above the cost of admission.
The arts do actually pay for themselves — but, as is so often the case when doing the math on economic activity, it’s a big picture scene. It is true that spending $689,000 of state funds on the Arts Commission, would bring into Kansas much more than that from Washington and generate still more spending and profits in Kansas communities. But it would be almost impossible to calculate how much of that would wind up back in Topeka.
The Kansas Senate seemed comfortable with that. It voted overwhelmingly to spend $689,000 to get back $2 million — and to keep on enriching the lives of Kansans, border to border.
Let’s all hope Gov. Brownback will be persuaded by the values the senators thoughtfully espoused and let the budget become law with the Arts Commission funding intact.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
