Federal arts funding is at risk again

The lesser effort that replaced the abolished Kansas Arts Commission has put the state at risk of losing federal funding again. It’s disappointing to see the arts still under siege in the state – and now the threat is as much fiscal as ideological.

The 2015 Legislature and governor had signed off on $190,000 for the Kansas Department of Commerce’s Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission for fiscal 2016, with perhaps $58,000 more to come from an income-tax checkoff and special arts license plates.

But the National Endowment for the Arts notified the KCAIC in September that Kansas was nearly $225,000 short of the state match needed to qualify for federal dollars and must close the gap by Jan. 15. A Commerce Department spokesman told Associated Press that the state was trying to identify ways to satisfy the matching requirement, perhaps by counting other state agencies’ projects or employee staff time.

But Henry Schwaller, a KCAIC member, expects the NEA to withhold about $591,000 it had planned to send Kansas for the fiscal year that ends next June.

The Brownback administration should make every effort to save the $591,000. But this year’s problem is likely to reoccur next year, as the approved state budget for fiscal 2017 includes just $189,000 for the KCAIC.

Schwaller predicted to The Eagle editorial board Monday that without the federal funding, only the Kansas communities with larger tax bases and populations will continue to have arts activities three years from now.

The 45-year-old Kansas Arts Commission, which Gov. Sam Brownback eliminated in 2011 amid an outcry from Kansans, had the expertise and dedication to avoid such a stumble. Those were the days when the Legislature provided $800,000 or more annually to the arts, leveraging another $1.2 million in federal and regional matching funds. “What we were doing before worked,” Schwaller said. “It was cost-effective, it was productive, and it delivered results.”

Now, the best that can be hoped for is that the lawmakers will fight for more state resources for the arts going forward. That won’t be easy.

Arts supporters triumphed over Brownback’s wrongheaded contention that the arts are not a “core function” of government and therefore unworthy of state dollars. But thanks to continuing revenue problems caused by the 2012 state income tax cuts, he and his legislative allies may now argue that the state is too broke to invest in its cultural life.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Federal arts funding is at risk again."