< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
It's hard to tell exactly what our legislature is doing this year, but at last report, the Joint Budget Committee had eliminated all funding for the Colorado Council on the Arts.
Granted, these are hard times, so maybe it is important to cut an $830,000 program from a $12 billion budget. The actual effect will be somewhat greater, though. Since state funds were used to match federal grants, the overall cost to arts in Colorado will be more like $1.5 million.
To be honest here, I must confess that over the years, I've probably received some of that money. Every so often I get a speaking gig, and some of these have been arranged by local arts councils which probably get some money from the state, and some of that eventually lands in the right hands.
But whenever I have a hand in arranging an event, I avoid Arts Council money like the plague (or, to be timely, since plague season hasn't arrived yet in Colorado, I avoid it like SARS).
Most years, I put together an Anza Day
in Poncha
Springs in late August. It's not a major production -- we
invite a historian to talk about Juan Bautista de Anza's
1779 expedition against the Jupe Comanche who had been
raiding northern New Mexico from the Great Plains.
Anza's journal which provided the first written account of the northern San Luis Valley and central Colorado, and so those of us who still write about this part of the world look upon him as a founding father.
Anza is an important figure in American history, although not for his work in New Mexico and Colorado. He founded San Francisco, and his route to that bay from Sonora, Mexico, is a national historic trail.
Financing Anza Day is pretty simple. The town of Poncha Springs provides the place (town park and town hall) and a motel room for the speaker. That seems fitting, since Anza and his army camped there one night. For the rest, I twist some local arms to raise money for the speaker's honorarium.
A few years ago, an arts-connected friend told me I ought to consider getting some state money, and she even offered me the paperwork. It would involve not just my filling out forms, but also getting the attendees to fill out evaluation forms after the talk, so that the council would know that state money was being properly spent.
Since I'm not an executive with a Colorado school district, I'm all for accountability in the spending of public funds. But if there's anything I hate, it's filling an evaluation form when you should be out in the hall gossiping, or outside catching a smoke (these days, some of us have found a politically correct description for this: instead of indulging in a destructive addictive behavior, we are honoring our multi-cultural national heritage by engaging in a traditional Native American social ritual). My interpretation of the Golden Rule says that you shouldn't make other people do things, like filling out evaluation forms, that you hate to do yourself.
Beyond that, I applied some time-efficiency studies to the council paperwork. To get a few hundred dollars of state arts money, I would have to write several hundred words as to why Anza's visit in August of 1779 was culturally or historically significant, and I would also have to find some people with credentials to say pretty much the same thing, since I'm merely a journalist who doesn't have any college degree, let alone an advanced one or a tenured position.
It looked like at least two days of hard work just to fill out the paperwork to get money from the arts council, and there might be more toil if I had to talk to a committee or provide more documentation.
So I got on the phone and started soliciting from community-minded companies, institutions and individuals; in less than an hour, I had enough money to pay the speaker, and nobody would have to fill out any paperwork after the speech. Instead, we could just enjoy a reception that involved the consumption of beverages that are not purchased with state arts funds.
Thus in my experience, the Republicans are right. We can still have cultural events without government subsidies. Indeed, it seems easier to arrange one without government help than with it.
But that's not entirely true, since there is still some government help, in that the Poncha Springs town government provides the venue, which also includes event insurance and the like.
So let's call it a public-private partnership on a local level. A small town contributes, as do various contractors, lumber yards, banks, media companies and software developers. Without dealing with the state arts council, we still have a cultural event.
But GOP propaganda often implies that there are parasites who live off grants from outfits like arts councils, and thus avoid working for a living. That's dead wrong -- filling out those forms is harder work than I ever want to do, and anybody who gets money that way has earned it.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >