Budget shortfall puts L.A. arts agency funding on the chopping block

Struggling to cope with a severe budget crisis, the Los Angeles City Council will consider a proposal Wednesday that would strip the municipal arts agency of the guaranteed funding it has enjoyed since 1989.

The idea of cutting off a direct pipeline between hotel tax receipts and arts funding drew an immediate outcry from arts supporters, reminiscent of one in 2004 that stopped then-Mayor James K. Hahn from eliminating the Department of Cultural Affairs and putting arts operations under the Recreation and Parks Department instead.

On Tuesday, Council President Eric Garcetti stepped back from the position he had appeared to take as one of six council members who submitted a motion to repeal the law that earmarks a $1 tax per $100 in hotel room charges for funding the arts. The total typically has come to about $10 million a year.

“I think there’s been a lot of misunderstanding,” Garcetti said. “I can guarantee you it’s not going to pass” without amendments spelling out that any diversion of tourism taxes from the arts would be temporary and that the Cultural Affairs Department would still receive a share of the hotel tax.

Garcetti said there’s also little council support for eliminating the $4-million-a-year arts grant program next fiscal year, because the grants spur economic activity and are money “well invested.”

City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana has recommended cutting at least $500,000 from this year’s arts grants and halting them entirely in 2010-11. This year, about 300 organizations and individual artists are due to receive city grants ranging from $2,000 to $52,400.

Garcetti said that in the rush to cope with the city’s worst budget crisis since the Great Depression, officials have rapidly generated new proposals such as the arts-funding repeal, with the idea of weighing them further before any changes go into effect.

“It’s so we can get the discussion moving forward” on how to deal with a budget gap of nearly $700 million -- $208 million now and $484 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1, Garcetti said. He added that he and the other proponents -- Jan Perry, Dennis Zine, Bernard Parks and Greig Smith, with Paul Krekorian seconding the motion -- “are not necessarily advocating” the repeal but want to consider different ways of saving money.

The council president said a coordinated e-mail campaign by arts supporters had gotten council members’ attention. “We’ve had a great outpouring of folks who continue to remind us that this is the cultural capital of the world” and that the arts are a pillar of that reputation, Garcetti said. “But everybody is going to feel pain in this budget.”

As a state Assembly member, Krekorian was the author of a still-pending bill to establish the first secure funding for the California Arts Council, by earmarking 20% of the sales taxes collected from arts-related businesses such as art and music dealers.

He said in a statement Tuesday that L.A. officials must contemplate drastic measures because “the fiscal crisis we face is nothing short of disastrous.”

The California Arts Council, whose $6-million budget is by far the lowest per capita among the nation’s state arts agencies, relies mainly on federal handouts and the public’s willingness to pay extra for special arts license plates. L.A.’s arts budget is $9.6 million -- for now.

Olga Garay, executive director of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, said Monday that eliminating hotel tax revenues would “decimate the department’s ability to serve” and “send a pretty chilling message” that Los Angeles considers the arts “a frill.”

Also on the table is a proposal to eliminate 14 city jobs by finding private, nonprofit operators for nine community arts centers currently run by the Cultural Affairs Department.

The department had proposed making that switch for three of its facilities, continuing a move toward more public-private partnerships, such as the ones it has with the Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center.

Garay said that two historic landmarks, the Watts Towers and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House, would still be city-run.

Overall, the city administrative officer’s plan calls for reducing the department’s staffing from 63 to 36 via 11 voluntary early retirements and 16 layoffs.

Arts for L.A., a nonprofit arts advocacy group, has marshaled public resistance to gutting arts grants and defunding the Department of Cultural Affairs.

Danielle Brazell, the group’s executive director, said Monday that the key argument will be “jobs, jobs, jobs,” citing studies that support the notion that the arts and culture boost the local economy.

Brazell said more than 2,000 people have used Arts for L.A.’s online e-mail system to urge council members to preserve arts funding.

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